Onward, Cool Girls: A Guest Post by Laura Brown and Kristina O’Neill

In late May 2023 (a month after Kristina was fired from her editor-in-chief role at WSJ. Magazine, and over a year after Laura was canned from the same role at InStyle) we sat on Kristina’s parents couch in Virginia, during her father’s 70^th birthday party, and banged out the proposal for All the Cool Girls Get Fired.

We wrote the book because, well, we got fired. We got fired, canned, laid off, reduced, let go, made redundant, terminated, or, our personal favorite, “promoted outward.” And we owned it. We owned it so much that we posted an Instagram portrait together, soon after Kristina was let go, with a very deliberate caption: “All the coolest girls get fired.” Our logic: in a situation that already sucks, what good comes of spinning it? During such a stressful time, BS-ing was another burden we had no interest in carrying.

We were floored by what came next: a night-long deluge of comments from women marveling at our frankness, a lot of, “You go girls,” and most affectingly (and all too rarely), “That happened to me too.”

We called each other the next morning and knew this was a book. And two-something years later, here it is: All the Cool Girls Get Fired is a manual of reinvention, a roadmap back from job loss into a thrilling new future you could never have imagined when you were stuck at that desk. It’s a balance of the practical (how to handle money, healthcare, your mental health, getting yourself back in the employment game) and inspirational (interviews with high profile, hugely successful women who once felt exactly like you: isolated, financially vulnerable, insecure). And damn, look at those ladies now. All the Cool Girls Get Fired will not just show you the way forward; these women will fire up your dreams.

All the Cool Girls Get Fired is not about shame (lose it!), it’s about pride and it’s about your worth. We want you to stand up tall, confident in your abilities and experience, reminded that your value doesn’t lie in your former job, it lies in you. Look at what gave you joy, or what made you feel powerful over the course of your career—follow that road! There’s a whole world out there, if you just let yourself see it.

As Oprah Winfrey tells us, “The setback is a setup.” And while at the beginning it doesn’t feel like a blessing, we promise you it is.

Onward, Cool Girls.

Laura and Kristina