Just Friends had been recommended to me throughout multiple facets of my life, so Gyan Yankovich’s involvement in this year's Sydney Writers’ Festival comes as no surprise. She is the current lifestyle editor at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age yet has been writing about friendship and connection for the majority of her career, whilst living across New York and Sydney. She has been published in The Cut, Vox, The Guardian, VICE as well as editing at Man Repeller and BuzzFeed.
Before the festival commenced, I had the pleasure of talking to her about her debut novel Just Friends, how relationships are shifting, the societal hierarchy between friends and family, and the creative industry.
Date- Thursday, May 16, 2024
Firstly, congratulations on the success of Just Friends, you’ve written about friendship and connection for the majority of your career. Was there a specific turning point or experience that made you feel like you had to write this book, apart from the pandemic?
It was something that kind of happened over a few years, like I write about in the book, having this kind of realisations through the pandemic, which I think a lot of people had, just about how much I was missing my friends, and not only like, my closest friends, but also just the friends that I had in the office, or people that I've run into at parties or, you know, see every now and again for a movie or a drink.
I think that that got me thinking about the fact that we don't talk about friendship in the same way that we do our family and romantic partnerships, our friends are always coming second, or even third to those relationships. So I kind of wanted to ask why that is the case, and what would the world look like if we actually made friendship mean as much as those relationships. So, I think that the thinking had been happening for a few years.
In terms of thinking, now's the right time to write the book, I had moved back to Australia from New York, and I just finished a job that was really stressful and messy for lots of different reasons. I realised in the last few years, I'd also gone through all these really big life changes, which had also made me have all these really big, exciting revelations, about friendship as well. So, I think between all those things, I kind of just found myself at this point where I not only had all these big thoughts about friendship, but I also had the time to sit down, and write. So, it was kind of a little bit of a perfect storm in that sense.
How did you find the experience of writing and publishing a book in comparison to the previous journalistic work you’ve done?
It's interesting, because I think my work as a journalist made it easier to work on the book. I knew how to find case studies, do interviews, read research and think about what I wanted the throughline of each chapter to be, and more broadly, what I wanted the book to be about.
On the other hand, I'd never worked on something so big. I think for me, it was all about breaking it down into small deadlines. You know, you can't really sit down and think I'm going to start my 70,000-word book, I had to be like, ‘today, I'm going to focus on this chapter, but not only this chapter, I'm going to focus on this section of the chapter that is about, ghosting within friendships or is about friendships for single people.’ I think that once I broke it down in that way, it made it feel a little bit more like the work that I've done in the rest of my career, which is more like writing a 1000-word story on this very specific topic.
In terms of your research, I counted the endnotes of Just Friends, and it references over a hundred different sources and studies. What was the process like, and how long did it take you?
I was working on the book for about a year, after I had my book deal, and it was all locked in and I had the deadline. I was thinking about what I wanted in it as I was working on the proposal, and talking to different publishers, but the first few months in the book, it was like no writing, it was all research. A lot of that was just going back to articles and books I'd read before and really liked and seeing who they interviewed, for those pieces of writing or research, and then looking into their other studies or sources. So, it was really just a matter of starting a Word document that became a bit of a dumping ground of everything that I have read about friendship, or anything that could be to do with this.
A lot of this stuff and the books that I read in a lot of the studies aren't necessarily about friendship, some are about community or loneliness or neighbourhoods or, you know, other cultural phenomena that I could then link back to friendships.
So, I really had to cast a pretty wide net in terms of who I was talking to, and what I was reading, which felt really overwhelming at times. Some days I'll be like, ‘Why am I spending this whole day reading about the Industrial Revolution?’ I literally had this week where I was like, ‘What am I doing, this is such a stupid use of my time,’ but once you go big, it does actually make it easier in the long run, because then you get to pull everything back together. I know that what I'm including in the book is right, because I've read so much on this topic and I've made a really active decision to include this, not just because I couldn't find anything else.
Were a lot of the people you interviewed people you knew, or how did you find the people you discuss in the book?
It was really a lot of different ways. There were some people that I knew I wanted to interview for the book, and a few of those people were my own friends. Then there were people who I had either read about elsewhere, or listened to, say, an interview on a podcast, or they've written a book themselves, or I've come across them in another way.
Majority of them just came from talking to other people, like I was at lunch with friends, and I was talking about this chapter, for example, about people whose close friends had passed away. One of my friends said, you should interview one of my friends. She hasn’t had friends pass away but she lost her brother recently, and she has told me how much she's been in touch with his friends and how helpful that has been, I'll put you in touch.
It was interesting, because it wasn't a case study that I thought in my head, I wanted to interview someone who has been in that situation, but it just came to me through having conversations. Everyone, all of us know so many people that have such interesting stories, it was kind of just a matter of finding the link between the link to the link to the person who wanted to talk to me, which was really good, because it's kind of nice finding yourself talking to someone that you didn't expect. It meant that I found that I was pushing myself a little bit further. I wasn't starting the book already knowing what was going to be in it. It was nice to finish it and be like, ‘Oh, this was really unexpected to me,’ but I learned a lot along the way as well.
In concluding Just Friends, you stated this book is just a starting point, and that there is so much more to be explored in terms of friendship. Where would you like to go next within your research and journey of the joy, influence and power of friendship?
I think that I want to write another book at some point. I don't necessarily know that it will be about friendship. I was lucky that I got to write the book about something that I like talking about, because when you release a book, you talk about the topic for a really long time afterwards. I think that, you know, I'm very lucky in that I'm not bored of talking about friendship.
It's been interesting talking to people, you always wish that you could do it the other way around. I've talked to so many more people about friendship since writing the book that I'm like, I would have loved to include that in the book or, in hindsight, I wish that I had gone a little bit deeper on this topic, because so many people want to talk about it.
I want to keep writing about friendship, and I want to keep talking about it. I don't necessarily know that it would take the form of another friendship book, but, but maybe something else in that similar vein will come up. I love thinking about relationships and how we all interact with each other. It's definitely what I want to keep writing about for my career.
Your chapter, ‘In the Group Chat,’ talks about how social media has shifted our definitions of friendship. How do you think we can overcome the epidemic of the ‘Facebook party,’ to prioritise genuine connection?
It just feels like such cliche advice, in the book, in so many different chapters, that was just be on your phone less and talk to people in person, which is easier said than done. I've directed all that advice very much to myself, but I think that spending time with people in person in really meaningful ways is so important. It's such an important thing to factor in, if you're able to see your friends in person it helps make your relationships a lot deeper.
Also writing the book about how much I love, doing errands with friends and, and doing hard work together. My friend literally messaged me this morning because I haven't been well, and I told her when I’m feeling better, I really need to clean the house because I just haven't been able to do any of it. She's like, ‘Well, if you want me to come over while you do your laundry and fold up your stuff, I would absolutely love to do that. We can put Bridgeton on, and you can just do that.’
Sometimes because we're so busy, when we've got time to spend time with our friends, I do this as well. I always prioritise something that I think is going to be fun, such as going out to dinner or going to a bar, getting dressed up, or going to a party. Often, it’s a lot nicer to just have someone over and do things together or watch a movie together or sit and have a cup of tea. My mum used to do that with all her friends, but now I'm so wound up in this modern world of like, doing the thing, at the restaurant everyone's talking about.
Going back to basics, if you could remove that layer of what expectation do I have about what a good, fun and successful friends hang out can be, what would I really want to do with someone? Sometimes it's just having someone over in like cooking a cheap dinner and sitting on the lounge with them.
How do you feel about making friends on dating apps?
Oh, that's an interesting one. There's obviously that huge meme about people who posted dating apps being like, I'm just here to make friends. I think that if there's like the best of intentions from both people, then it's definitely possible.
It's funny, I was shocked by how many people asked me, when they heard that I was working on the book, like, ‘Do you think that men and women can just be friends?’ Obviously not all women date men and all men date women, but I was like, of course they can. I know a lot of people who have been friends with someone that they have dated, and that's obviously a bit of a different friendship dynamic to what you would have if you haven't dated someone.
What I came across when working on the book is that there are so many kinds of friendships that exist. Some of those friendships do include people being friends with people that they're attracted to but aren't in a relationship with. That doesn't mean that you can't be friends with someone. So, I think that in terms of coming back to dating apps, it's a bit tricky. I think on dating apps, whether you are dating or looking for friends, because the depth of communication that you can have before you either meet someone in person or you know, talking to them on the phone or something is so limited. It can be difficult to figure out someone's real intentions, but I would like to think that it's possible.
One of the topics you continuously return to is the hierarchy between family and friends that has been skewed by society. What do you think are ways we can actively try to dismantle that societal divide?
That is a really difficult one, to dismantle because it's really historical, the history of the nuclear family goes back decades and decades. It's very tied to our relationship to work and the economy and capitalism and all these things that, unfortunately, we can't kind of just snap our fingers and change. I think one thing that I've really been encouraging people to think about is when they think about the future, you know, whether it's 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, consider their friends as well.
Especially when we're younger, when we're in our 20s, in particular when we think about our personal lives and what we want in the next few decades, usually the first things that we jump to are like, I want to have a partner, or I want to have kids. I want to live in this kind of house, or I want to live here, there’s career aspirations, and all those things, which, obviously, all those things are important. Yet, when we don't factor in our friends, when we're thinking about those features, and imagining our goals and our dreams for ourselves, it kind of sets ourselves up for failure in a way. It's just rethinking some of those conventions, and some of those milestones that we, that we use to consider ourselves, successful in our personal lives.
It's allowing us to think like, I would love to have a beautiful apartment with someone I really care about, and that person doesn't necessarily have to be a partner, it could be your best friend. Allowing yourself that flexibility, when you think about the things you want for the future can only be a blessing, because it means regardless of what happens in the next 10 years in your romantic life, if you've got friends close, and you find someone who is looking for a similar living situation, as you, still get to end up in a place where you're content, as this is something that you has actually dreamed of.
You craft an important callout for the lack of labels for friendships in comparison to romantic relationships. How do you feel about the labelling of introverted and extroverted, and how that can stunt the way people look for connection?
I have so many thoughts. I think the introvert extroverts label comes into many of these labels that we put on ourselves. There's all these personality type quizzes that we can do. Now, people are really into their horoscopes, and all these things are really interesting exercises in helping us think more about the kind of person that we are. When it comes to introverts and extroverts, and whether we feel energised by being around a lot of people or, we're our best selves after being energised by spending time alone are really important factors.
But, once we have such rigid labels on ourselves, especially when something is as binary as introvert or extrovert, and we don’t really allow for a lot of grey space between the black and white is something that can hold us back. Also, people can go through periods where they are more extroverted, or they are more introverted, and that doesn't necessarily have to be a period over several years.
I find that I definitely go in seasons, such as, during summer, I like to see everyone I've ever known every night of the week. I know within myself that by the time it gets cooler, and I come off the end of that really busy draining summer period on my chest I want a few weekends to myself to recharge. I think that allowing ourselves that flexibility, and not being so like, I'm not a person who likes big groups or I am a person who prefers to stay home on a Saturday night, can really hold us back. They can influence the way that if you are that person who thinks that you prefer a one on one catch up or, you know, just spend a night at home alone, you can go into something, presumably you're not going to have a good time when really you might.
Definitely. You’ve stated you write mainly from the millennial experience of friendship; how do you think friendship and connection is going to develop or change between younger generations?
In a positive way, I think that younger people have a bit more of a fluid approach to relationships and friendship and how those two can blend. I've seen, you know, a lot of younger people being drawn to my book, because they had kind of already realised a lot of what I was getting out of the book before picking it up, and then picking it up has been a way to go a little bit deeper.
There's already a big cultural shift happening among younger generations, which is exciting to me that people are already starting to rethink what is most important to them. Everything isn’t as traditional as putting family first or putting romantic partnerships first. I think it's nice to be able to also have these kinds of other options and know that it's fine to want to build a future with a friend or to love your friends just as much as anyone else in your life.
You’ve been involved in the industry for over a decade, what excites you most about the Sydney Writers Festival?
I mean, I love the Sydney Writers’ Festival. I just feel like there's so many great local authors appearing this year, everyone always gets so excited about the big international acts, but there are so many great books at the moment by young Australian women. I'm so excited. I feel like I've seen some of the lineups and I've already read some of the books and the other ones are books that I already wanted to read. I love when there’s an Australian book that everyone is talking about now, and I feel there’s a few of those author’s appearing.
Is there any talk or author you are most excited to catch or hear speak?
Something that’s been exciting recently is how much everyone has loved Green Dot by Madeleine Gray. I read it a few months ago and I just feel like it's one of those books that everyone I know has read, and we've all been talking about it. It's getting all this international attention, which is exciting. She’s on a panel with Jessie Stephens and Nadine Cohen and I just think that it's so fun because it's like all women, all Australian fiction, all books that I feel like everyone's already talking about, which is just such an exciting place for the industry to be right now.
