Amy Chozick Emily Sandifer Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment Three weeks after Amy Chozick had her first child, Anna Wintour called with an assignment. The then-Vogue editor-in-chief wanted Chozick, who rose to journalism fame covering Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, to write the first big mainstream profile of Stormy Daniels. "You don't say no to that," quips Chozick. "So the first time I left my baby, it was to go to strip clubs in Milwaukee." The trip began the now-infamous Vogue story, but it also provided Chozick with the early inspiration for what became her debut novel. Before the trip, she purchased old issues of Playboy and other adult magazines on eBay to read what were then the only examples of Daniels' previous interviews. "I was interviewing nannies at the same time and my husband would be like, you forgot there's a stack of porn on the coffee table," she says. "All of this is to say that the ideas of sex work and new motherhood were merging. They're both worlds where you're exposed, everyone's commenting on your body, everyone has an opinion about you." Related Stories Excerpt Malin Akerman to Narrate Audiobook of New Novel From 'The Hunting Wives' Author May Cobb (Exclusive) News Sophie Kinsella, Beloved 'Shopaholic' Novelist, Dies at 55 Chozick went on to adapt her 2018 novel Girls on the Bus (about her time on the campaign trail) for HBO Max, and work on other film and television projects, while the idea - and the longstanding desire to write a novel - continued to percolate. On July 21, 2026, that idea will hit shelves as With Friends Like You, a story about a new mother in Manhattan who reunites with her old college roommate decades after she vanished into the world of sex work. The Hollywood Reporter is exclusively revealing the book's cover, and a conversation with the author, below. Jacket design by Kaitlin Kall and jacket photograph by Elizaveta Porodina. How did the rest of the concept of this novel come together for you after the reporting trip for the Stormy Daniels profile? I had a roommate who became a stripper and sex worker, and we lost touch. I had heard that she sadly passed away, and I thought about being able to rewrite her ending with a fictional character. And also, the things I learned from talking to Stormy and other sex workers sat with me for a really long time. Did you pull in any specific people or personalities to become part of the book? I think about the way that Sean Baker's research for Anora worked its way in quite specifically. It's funny, Anora happened after I'd already sold the book, so I was like oh good, this topic is having a moment. This is probably my own neurosis, but I feel like every character actually comes from something inside me. I'm writing a show right now about a 60-year-old male lawyer, and I feel like Lonnie is me. But also, in addition to the Stormy story, my journalism career was very much about covering controversial women who were swept up in the public eye. I wrote a profile of Elizabeth Holmes right before she went to prison. That was a talker. But I also spent a lot of my career covering Hillary Clinton and all the women running for president. I wrote a big piece about Lorena Bobbitt, and what we didn't know about her - that her husband had been raping her during a time that marital rape was not illegal in Virginia. I did a story on the Kardashians as businesswomen when no one had thought of them that way before. So this is sort of my sweet spot, and I'm always drawing on different characters and pathologies to put into my characters. How did it feel to write literary fiction as compared to fiction for television? With screen and TV, you're always constrained by budget. You write something and think, oh my God we can never produce this. You're writing from a place of thinking about whether it's produceable. So this was unrestrained. I don't know how much time you spend in New York but all of these luxury towers have sprung up in the past few years that are empty. Billionaires own these apartments for tax purposes. And it always struck me. At one point in my book, the main character and other moms take over one of these luxury towers. They've been in the news a lot lately because one of the towers is sort of falling apart. I wrote this in 2023, way before Zohran and his platform of affordability, but a big theme of this book is how impossible it is to have a baby in New York, and this character feeling like she's in this city where you have homeless shelters that are full and luxury retail towers that are empty. What is that? I think I tapped into exactly why he won, without realizing it. And to be clear, the moms [in my book] aren't poor, they're working professionals who feel really strained. They can't afford childcare, they