
On Helen Gurley Brown, Cosmopolitan, and Why Work Friends Become Family
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Zibby Owens
Welcome to Totally Booked. I'm Zibby Owens. I've interviewed more than 2,000 authors on this show and learned endless amounts about storytelling, reinvention and life itself. Because when you talk about books, you're really talking about life. So get ready to hear from today's best authors, the best selling and the not yet discovered. Come find your next great read and the story behind it. Enjoy. John Searles is the author of Single A Novel. You might have seen pictures of me posting from the launch party at Love Shack Fancy because Love Shack Fancy gave me a dress to wear which my daughters thought was basically the coolest thing ever. So thank you for that John. Anyway, John Searles is a New York Times bestselling and award winning author of four novels. His books have been published in over a dozen languages and have been voted Best of the Year or top picks by Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, Salon and the American Library Association. A frequent contributor to the New York Times and the Washington Post, John was a top editor at Cosmopolitan for two decades, first hired by Helen Gurley Brown, which is incredibly relevant as you will see as we discuss this book. Welcome, John. Thank you so much for coming on Totally Booked to talk about single girls. Yay.
John Searles
I'm happy to be here always. And being to see you.
Zibby Owens
Aw. So late in the book you have a line. What a unique experience, the writing of a book. Tell me about the experience of writing this book.
John Searles
You know, I usually write sort of darker, character driven suspense novels and oftentimes when I go on book tour, women come up to me afterwards, because it's usually women at book signings and they come up and they say, you're so kind of sunny and bright and, you know, like a bright light, but your books are really dark and creepy and I'm afraid to read them. And I always felt a little like I let them down somehow. But also I always had in my mind, because I was an editor at Cosmopolitan for 23 years, I always had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to write a book about cosmo in the 1960s and Helen Gurley Brown. I was first hired when she was the editor in chief. I just got out of graduate school at NYU and I, I always wanted to write it. And I envisioned this kind of pink, half pink, pink, happy, bright light of a book, joyful. And about that in the 1960s, kind of mad Men for women or Mad Men, but about the women. And I finally just wrote it. I didn't. The world is so dark right now. I didn't have any darkness in me to put on the page. And so I thought I remembered a conversation that Helen Gurley Brown and I had once. And I got up during the night and I used that as a jumping off point to kind of imagine some things. And then I kept going and wrote it in a year and eight months, which is actually quite quick for me.
Zibby Owens
So one of the things I feel like there is one little dark through line of this book, which is that which actually I think really propels the narrative a lot, is finding out what exactly happened with Helen Gurley Brown and the accident with her father and what happened with her sister and then her sister's life story. And so you have Helen's trajectory of her immediate family and all of the kind of bad stuff that happens coursing throughout to the point where I'm like, well, what happened and how did that happen? So, yes, we have this beautiful glamorous professional success. But deep inside there is this memory and stewing over the situation that was out of Helen's control.
John Searles
Yeah, you know, when I started at Cosmo, like I said, I got out of graduate school at nyu, I was waiting tables. I was dreaming of writing a novel, having a career as a novelist. And I got this like, horrific rejection letter. It was every editor had returned a manuscript that I sent to her directly. She said I could. I didn't need an agent. And she sent a nice rejection back, a polite one. And when I pulled the manuscript out of the box, this little scrap of paper floated to the floor. And it was a. In a note from an in house reader mistakenly left in the manuscript. And it said I could barely make it to page 60. And I feel really badly for anyone who has to read the whole thing. I know I was like very Downton Abbey about it. I took to my bed, I was like, you know. But I. Around that time, I thought, you know, it's too painful. I can't write anymore. Around that time, I went on a job interview. I heard about any position in the books department at Cosmo, opening packages two days a week. And I went on the job interview and I got the job. And the first day I met Helen, and it happened to be the day of the O.J. simpson verdict, which we watched in her office. And, you know, I never thought she and I had anything in common at all. I thought I might stay at the magazine two weeks. As I said, I stayed for 23 years. But turned out Helen and I did have some things in common which were less than glamorous childhoods. You know, she came from very humble beginnings. You know, for me, I've told you before, my dad was a truck driver, and I used to go trucking in the summers with him. She had this, you know, her father passed in this horrible way when she was just a girl, 10 years old, a really freak accident. And her mother always kind of drove into her this refrain of, you're not pretty enough. You and your sister are not pretty enough. And it haunted Helen in the way some things from my childhood, although I had a very loving family, it was, you know, a kooky upbringing, haunt me. And so we turned out to. We did have some things in common. And we became friends with each other. And I would go see her in her office and she would send me notes all the time. We had many notes from her. And so I used that in the book because I knew underneath the sort of glamour of her life, there was that core Person that shaped by her youth and by the trauma of her youth. And I could relate to that.
Zibby Owens
Wow. Well, that was one of my favorite. Through lines, honestly. I mean, I loved the whole thing. And it was just so amazing also to see the other cast of characters. I mean, this is really an ensemble piece. It's not just about Helen. It's about everyone who was, like, part of this film founding team and how Cosmo got started and the bravery and chutzpah kind of it took for her to even do this, and the limited opportunity, how she just made it happen, and then how all the characters develop over time and interact. And you have this one, speaking of freak accidents, like falling out of a champagne flute.
John Searles
A champagne glass hot tub.
Zibby Owens
A champagne glass hot tub. Yes. It was in my head. I just couldn't get the words out. I had the visual.
John Searles
Yeah.
Zibby Owens
For one of her co workers. Talk about the idea of making this. Yes. About her, but also about all of the other co founders of the magazine, really.
John Searles
You know what it is? So much of Helen's life was the kind of. The threat of. It was so much of her relationships with other women in the workplace, her being a boss for the first time when she took over Cosmo and when she took over Liz Smith, who I also was very fortunate to know, the famed gossip columnist. When Helen took over, Liz was still the entertainment editor at Cosmo. She had not begun her career as a gossip columnist, and the two formed an instant, lifelong friendship. And I just thought in writing about Helen, the best way to write about her and to really show what a dynamic, unique, quirky woman she was was to show her relationships with other women. And so Liz came naturally, because I knew Liz, and then the other women were less well known. They led more private lives. So the most I had to go on was the stories they edited in those issues at the time. Because when I was an editor, so often the COVID lines of stories were informed by our staff and what everyone pitched and what was going on with their boyfriend, their fiance, their mother, their father, their friends, and those became. That was all fodder for the article. So I thought, well, probably was the same in the 1960s. So I got my hands on all these old issues from the 60s, many of which I have. I should go grab one to show you. They're so. So fun and so brilliant, and they're so colorful and outrageous. And so I used those stories to kind of. Or those cover lines and articles to kind of reverse engineer narratives to imagine what was going on in the lives of the editors at the time. So I don't know, I just didn't want to write like a bio, like a fictionalized biography of Helen. I wanted it to be about women's magazines in the 1960s, about Cosmo, about Liz Smith, about Helen, about the other women in the office. And so. And that's what I did. And it was really fun. And the champagne glass hot tub scene, you know, the. The. For those who are watching haven't read it. The real champagne glass hot tub was not introduced until, I think the early 80s, but I just grew up. I don't know if you remember this commercial.
Zibby Owens
Beautiful Mount Airy lodge. Yes, exactly.
John Searles
Everyone I met, the Mount Airy lodge.
Zibby Owens
Oh, you have to bring.
John Searles
Oh, you remember that?
Zibby Owens
Exactly.
John Searles
So Amy Rya, the actress who's incredible, she was in a film of another book of mine and she and I have stayed friends and she recorded the audiobook Single Girls, which is so exciting. And she just, like you, was able to sing the song. So many people in my life. One of my agents was able to sing the song. Everybody who grew up on the east coast remembers that song. And so I just was like, I need to put that in. And that good thing about writing fiction is you can kind of fudge things. So I made it an early prototype of what later became the champagne glass hot tub we all know. And it was just such a fun, colorful scene. It's this unofficial sex and relationship editor goes with her boyfriend for the romantic weekend in this rickety kind of first edition champagne glass hot tub and have a sexual misadventure, as we'd say in class. I'm so happy you have fun reading it, Zibby.
Zibby Owens
Thank you so much. So much fun. Oh, my gosh. And then there's also the disappointment, like one of her other editors who had a first marriage to a man who, on their wedding night, you know, it was clear that he was more interested in wearing lingerie than taking hers off. And what do you do with a situation like that? And you know how we get into situations where maybe they just weren't in the plan. And how do you rebound from that?
John Searles
Yeah, well, so much of what I, you know, I was in the 1960s, I was not editing a magazine. I was not around. So I. But I. So much of what I know about the decade and what I know from talking to women, which I, you know, I worked in an office with women for many years, and is that in the 1960s in particular, the world didn't really support women in many obvious ways that we know in so many terms of rights and things, but also just in terms of society and women. You know, Helen's big belief that women were, what she said, hurting, hypnotized into marriage, you know, for the first person that their parents thought they should marry. And that was Helen's whole thing, like, you don't have to rush into marriage. You can be single, you can enjoy your sex life, you can enjoy dating different men. You don't have to feel ashamed of it. And so I wanted to capture that experience. And I found in one of the old issues a story that's that said when. When husbands fail as lovers, a young wife's frank report. And I thought, oh, well, I wonder who pitched this idea, which editor? What was going on in her life at the time? And that's how the story that you're talking about was born, from that.
Zibby Owens
Wow, so interesting. And back to Liz Smith, by the way, who I didn't know was a brunette. Really? Is that true?
John Searles
Yes. Yeah, she was. Yeah, she was.
Zibby Owens
Fun facts. Fun facts. Yeah, True. I mean, Liz Smith also, you know, in the. One of the openings, I feel like I'm not giving too much away, but, like, you know, comes out early to Helen and feels very supported and it seals their friendship forever. And her own point of view of things. Talk about that.
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This year's girls trip to Telluride was the best. We one upped ourselves with my Sapphire Preferred card. And with five times points on Chase travel, plus three times points on vacation homes with top brands, we got this incredible cabin.
Zibby Owens
It was a mansion.
Chase Sapphire Card User
And with three times the points on dining, we ordered a wagyu steak dinner
Zibby Owens
and that pistachio gelato was too good.
Chase Sapphire Card User
So where should we go next year?
Zibby Owens
I've got ideas.
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John Searles
Well, I also, you know, when I thought about Liz, she was. She was private about that part of her life. She didn't go around telling people that. But I also know, like, she and Helen used to rent a house in Sag harbor in the summers. Or Liz would rent a house and Helen would go and they had this relationship where they would kind of drive each other crazy. Like Liz said, it was like this box car of a house they rented and Liz would be sleeping downstairs and Helen would be up at sunrise doing her calisthenics and making noise. And Liz would be like, with that Texas, I'm not a good mimic in that sense. They're like, what the hell are you doing there? You know? And so they kind of had. And Liz hated the Scavulo covers and she was like, they're so tacky. And Helen would say, well, as soon as they stop selling Liz, I'll book the photographer you like, you know. So they had this kind of funny bickering relationship. But I thought at some point they must have had a conversation about Liz's sexuality, you know, because Liz was not. She wasn't. She didn't deny her sexuality at all. But she. She just didn't advertise it. And I thought, well, what would that be like? And so that was how that scene was born. Set in a deli in Carnegie Delhi, I think, you know, and it was just so fun to write and there was a real sweetness between them. And, you know, I have to say the book is dedicated to certain women who really helped me start my career as a writer and changed my life. The memory of Helen Gurley Brown and also the memory of Liz Smith. And once Liz Smith early on wrote about me in her column. She called me one of her little pets. And my grandmother, my grandmother, who was not a milk and cookies grandmother, she was a tough talking, chain smoking lady. She called me and she said, johnny, I called Liz's office to thank her and I said, oh my God, you called her office? What did you say? I was like, zibby. I was like, what did you say? And she said, Liz said, my grandmother said, I just want to thank you for writing about my Johnny. And Liz said, you know, the whole reason I do this job is to make grandmothers proud. So I'm happy to hear it. And I thought it was the sweetest thing. It was so sweet. That is sweet. Liz has sweet. She had such a big heart. And I felt, you know, I found while writing this book, I found so many letters from Helen, notes from Liz, and I was just a kid and I realized looking back how lucky I was to have these powerful women just show me love and believe in me as a writer and give support because I didn't really grow up with anybody telling me, oh, you can be a writer one day and move to New York and have this big life. That was not in the cards for me, you know.
Zibby Owens
So then how did that happen?
John Searles
You know, when I was, I guess 20, my younger sister, I think maybe I've told this before, but she passed away after her senior prom really tragically. And at that point I just so cliche to say as a writer. I know you're not supposed to use cliches as a writer, but I really realized life is short. And I thought, you know what? I've always wanted to be a writer and I have this dream and I'm just going to do it. And I moved to the city. My father was shipping Broadway show sets at the time. He was bringing in the set of the musical Kiss of the Spider Woman, which had a big birdcage in his truck in the back. And I moved here and I got a partial scholarship from my writing to nyu. And I waited tables for many years and, and kept writing and getting a lot of rejection. And eventually I wrote a book that sold and I heard about the job at Cosmo. I think that came first heard about that part time position at Cosmo. I wrote a book that sold and then I just kept writing, you know. But this book is particularly. All my books have. Are meaningful to me, obviously, but this book, it was so much fun to bring out a different side of my personality, to be able to really be playful with it. And as you said, it's a novel, so there's pathos and serious things happen. But to have, you know, there's. Helen had gone to this unorthodox therapy and so I wrote this nude group therapy scene in LA in the late 50s that was so much fun to write. And so it was just great because when you're writing more of a suspense novel, you kind of don't get you can have fun in different ways. Like I would hand my books into my editor before, and I would say, isn't it hilarious? And she's like, no, you have, like, people murdered and people being hit in the head with a shovel. And that's not hilarious. But this book, everybody's like, it's so much fun. So it. And there's something about this book with the. I don't know if it's the pink cover. I don't know if it's Cosmo. Helen. Like, when I tell people about it, they just get excited and want to. Want to read it. And it's a really nice, satisfying feeling as a writer, because, you know, you work. You write, too. So, you know, Zibby, we work so hard and long on our craft, and so it's nice when you feel people connecting with what you've done, you know?
Zibby Owens
But it's not just fun. It's also really good and well paced and has all the elements, you know, it's. It's totally immersive. Like, you don't want to put it down. It's very. It's more than just fun. It's. You know, and it's the fact that it's a cultural sort of artifact as well, in a way, just enhances it. But at its core, it's about friendships and entrepreneurship and creation and all these, like. And doing it in a whole new way where it's about the relationships that prior to that, people were not really talking about. So it's quite original. And so I feel like all of that startup energy, in a way, is, like, in the book, as we watch it all build and all of it. So it's really awesome.
John Searles
Thank you, Zabee. It means so much to me, and I like hearing you say that, because it is so much. Working in a magazine for years, you really become such close friends with the people you work with, and they become kind of a second family. And I wanted to capture that feeling with the single girls and how they all bond and connect and what they all mean to each other. And there's a scene in the end where they're all together, and one of them says, like, you know, people look back on old books and old movies, but people don't usually look back on old magazines, and they're like, what happens? And, like, they're forgotten. And, you know, it's something I used to think about, because when we would be editing and we'd be caught up in it, and then we'd ship it to the printer, and then a few months later, I'd pick up the issue and it already looked Old just a few months later. It was so fascinating to me. And so, you know, magazines are kind of forgotten, and sometimes the editors who work so hard and gave their lives to them are forgotten. And so that's why this book is my tribute not just to Helen, but to the women who worked on Cosmo, but also the women in the magazine industry. And the magazine industry is not the same as it had been even when I was in it. So I wanted to capture all of that feeling. So I'm glad you think I did. So thank you.
Zibby Owens
You definitely did. And just the last perfect piece, I think, is Helen's marriage and her relationship actually. Were they married? Her. Yeah, they were married, right?
John Searles
Yeah. Yes, they were. Yeah.
Zibby Owens
Because that dynamic was such a great spin on her life. Like, we. We know her professionally, but just the way that she interacted, oh, my gosh, it was just amazing. Anyway, all of it was. But I loved that.
John Searles
Oh, thank you. I'm glad you had fun with David, too, also. It was nice to see a relationship where he was so supportive of her, but in a marriage where a man is so supportive of a woman's career, I just love seeing that, you know, so it was great.
Zibby Owens
First girl boss.
John Searles
Yeah, she was. I always love seeing you, and I have to say thank you for all you do for books and authors. It's really, really incredible what you do. And I speak for. I know thousands of authors who say thank you. So I appreciate it, and I know so many others do, too. So thank you.
Zibby Owens
Thanks, John.
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So sweet.
Zibby Owens
All right. Okay. All right, I'll see you soon. Okay, bye.
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Thanks.
John Searles
Bye. Bye.
Zibby Owens
Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Siby formerly Moms don't have Time to Read Books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram @zippyowens and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books. Our trip up the coast was perfection. With my Sapphire Preferred card, we earned
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three times the points on gas, online, grocery, and dining.
John Searles
It was amazing.
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Chase Sapphire preferred the card that's preferred for a reason.
John Searles
Cards issued by JP Morgan Chase bank
Zibby Owens
and a member fdic, subject to credit
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approval terms apply with no fees or minimums on checking accounts. It's no wonder the Capital One bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how most Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends, it's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. What's in your wallet terms apply. See capitalone.combank Capital One NA Member FDIC
Michael's Party Shop Announcer
Is your kid's birthday coming up? Don't stress the prep the party Shop at Michael's is your one stop shop for everything from Bluey to rodeo. Transform your space into a birthday wonderland with dreamworthy tablescapes and decor starting at $0.99 plus get free helium inflation on select balloon styles. Whether you're crafting a one of a kind bash or grabbing the essentials, Michaels has everything to make their big day. Legendary. Shop now and order ahead for delivery or in store pickup. Michaels Everything to celebrate Anything.
Episode: John Searles, SINGLE GIRLS
Host: Zibby Owens
Date: July 10, 2026
In this engaging episode, Zibby Owens sits down with acclaimed author and longtime Cosmopolitan editor John Searles to discuss his new novel, Single Girls. The conversation dives into John’s inspiration for the book, his personal connection to Helen Gurley Brown, the cultural and historical context of women’s magazines in the 1960s, and the enduring power of female friendship, resilience, and reinvention. The episode is filled with warmth, nostalgia, industry insights, and heartfelt anecdotes, providing both a behind-the-scenes look at Searles’ creative process and a celebration of magazine publishing’s golden era.
A Shift in Tone:
Cosmopolitan Roots and Helen Gurley Brown:
Darkness Beneath the Glamour:
Career Beginnings & Mentorship:
Ensemble Storytelling:
Inspiration from Real Magazines:
Playful Moments & Fictional Freedom:
Reflections on the 1960s:
Developing Storylines:
The episode balances humor, reverence, and vulnerability, with both Zibby and John sharing personal stories and laughing together. Zibby’s style remains warm and curious, while John’s responses are candid, reflective, and filled with gratitude.
This is a standout episode for listeners interested in the intersection of publishing history, women’s empowerment, and the evolution of workplace camaraderie. It’s both a celebration of bold women and a moving meditation on the relationships and resilience that define creative legacies.