In One Nightstand, celebrity readers and writers join us at the blond in 11 Howard to discuss some of their favorite books, allowing us to learn about their tastes and lives in the process.

Lukas Gage has always been a natural storyteller — one who’s never let a few facts get in the way of a good story. “Growing up, I’d lie to my diary to just make my life seem more entertaining. I lied about having horses, [living] in a big mansion, and that I was on American Idol,” the actor tells Bustle. But it wasn’t until Gage started writing his debut memoir, I Wrote This for Attention, that he came to understand the impulse behind those fabrications. “Having a narrative that was my own perspective on what [was happening] was very important to me.”

That desire to shape his own story is partly why Julia Fox’s Down The Drain — her unflinching memoir about survival, identity, and self-invention — resonated so deeply with him. “She said something like, ‘Don’t let the assholes win,’ but I’ve also been the asshole,’” says Gage, 30. “We’ve all been the asshole. We’ve all been the villainous person at times. Julia’s never trying to be the hero of her story and she never plays the victim.”

Gage found a similar moral complexity in The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. He also found himself relating to the novel’s themes of reinvention and redemption. “I’ve lived a good amount of life in all these different places and been thrown into situations that were a little insane at the time,” he says. As such, the novel’s central duo — Theo and Boris — each spoke to him in equal measure. “Both of them lived inside of me at that time.”

Another book that’s lingered with him is Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, which follows a missionary family in the Congo. “Each [family member] has such a clear voice and perspective. Some of them don’t align with other people’s perspective of what’s happening in this situation,” he says. “It’s so funny to see every person can have such a wildly different version of reality, and she does that so beautifully.”

His final pick, The Library Book by Susan Orlean, is also full of opposing accounts and contradictions, especially when it comes its central character, Harry Peak — a man who may or may not have been responsible for the 1986 fire at the Los Angeles Central Library. “At first glance, a book about the history of a library is not going to hold my interest,” he says. But once he learned about Peak, he was hooked. “The way that she writes about this troubled character who has a hard time keeping his alibi straight is just so entertaining and interesting.”

Because for Gage, a story doesn’t haven’t to be entirely true — it just has to be one hell of a ride.

Watch the full interview below.

By Maria Popova

In this episode of A Productive Conversation, I welcome Ben Amos—video strategist, producer, international speaker, and author of Engage: The Definitive Guide to Video Strategy for Business. Ben has helped brands and entrepreneurs around the globe cut through the noise and connect with their audiences through intentional video.

We dig into why strategy must come before tactics, how to identify your ideal audience, and the real role video can play in building relationships that convert. This isn’t about shiny equipment or the latest platform—it’s about clarity, focus, and showing up with purpose.

Six Discussion Points

• Why the pandemic accelerated the adoption and acceptance of video
• The Sun Tzu quote that shapes Ben’s approach: “Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat”
• How to define your audience with a singular avatar—and why that matters
• Setting clear goals for each video in alignment with the customer journey
• The seven elements of video strategy and why production comes last
• Practical tips for repurposing podcasts and long-form content into impactful short videos

Three Connection Points

Talking with Ben reminded me that video doesn’t need to be overwhelming. With a strategy-first mindset, it becomes less about keeping up with trends and more about connecting with the right people at the right time. Whether you’re starting fresh or rethinking your current approach, Ben’s insights are the kind that can change how you view video in your work.

Want to support the podcast? You can subscribe to the show and leave quick rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts. You can subscribe on Spotify and also on Apple Podcasts.

As the media landscape continues to evolve, an innovative crop of entertainment industry professionals are using their platforms to change our relationship to how we consume entertainment.

Stephen Shaw and Jonathan Linden, co-CEOs of Round Room Live (RRL), and Isha Sesay, CEO of Areya Media, are leading the way, connecting audiences to experiences that entertain, illuminate and educate in new ways without sacrificing impactful storytelling.

Taking TV and culture where it’s never been 

What do a former lawyer, a Rolling Stones roadie and “Baby Shark” have in common? A lot, which you’ll know if you’ve ever attended an arena show or exhibition put on by Stephen Shaw and Jonathan Linden, co-CEOs of Round Room Live. 

After working together at live entertainment producer S2BN Entertainment, the two combined their years of expertise to create a world all their own. The tour and exhibition experience for brands like the Rolling Stones, Oprah Winfrey and Marvel and Linden’s global licensing experience and producer credentials for two of Barbra Streisand’s tours and Rock of Ages on Broadway would be the perfect recipe for success.  

Thanks to their big-picture thinking, they’ve transformed the shows and songs kiddos see and hear on TVs and tablets into engaging live spectacles. As surprising as it may seem, they turned the 18-word viral sensational song “Baby Shark” into a 75-minute show seen by more than 300,000 families. Then, they proved that an on-stage reimagining of a TV show can rival the normal way we consume entertainment by taking everyone’s bespectacled friend in orange suspenders, Blippi, from behind a screen to a full-on musical. 

The duo’s events aren’t just for kids, however. Family-friendly offerings like The Formula 1 Exhibition appeal to all ages, while those in search of powerful social justice and global advocacy installations can find it in Mandela: The Official Exhibition, created in partnership with The Royal House of Mandela. The exhibition, which tours internationally, examines the legacy of the human rights icon with personal effects and objects not previously seen outside of South Africa. A past exhibit, Tupac Shakur: Wake Me When I’m Free, used technology and artifacts from Shakur’s personal archives as a way to dive deeper into the activism, music and art he created.

Shaw says RRL’s approach to live events is rooted in storytelling, cultural expression and emotional connection. He points to the Mandela and Shakur exhibitions as powerful examples of how live experiences can engage audiences in critical social issues.  

“These exhibitions are designed not only to celebrate cultural icons but also to illuminate the struggles, triumphs and legacies that shaped them,” he shares. “By bringing these stories to life through immersive environments, archival content and emotionally resonant narratives, we aim to foster reflection, dialogue and understanding…. It’s about creating spaces where people of all ages and backgrounds can come together to learn, feel and connect with something larger than themselves.” 

Given the sheer volume of families who attend their events and exhibitions across the world, one might wonder if the duo foresees a shift from screens as a main source of entertainment to watching living, breathing actors, singers, and dancers recreating something that is one-dimensional. 

“Absolutely,” Shaw says, noting that they have seen a clear cultural shift.  

“In an increasingly digital world, there’s something uniquely powerful about being in a physical space, surrounded by other people, watching stories unfold in real time,” he says, adding that “people want to feel something. They want to connect—not just with content, but with each other, with history, with emotion and with the world around them. That’s what we strive to deliver.”

Bringing the African diaspora into the light 

Connecting people with content, each other and the world is something RRL has mastered with their live events and exhibitions, but Isha Sesay is equally committed to doing similar work through a different medium. 

In 2021, the former CNN international news anchor became CEO of OkayMedia, now Areya Media (AM), a multimedia company that amplifies voices across the global Black and African community and is the parent company of Okayplayer and OkayAfrica, platforms known for their culturally driven narratives.
 

Sesay’s passion for creating impactful storytelling that advances underrepresented voices is a skill that earned the UK-born, Sierra Leone-raised journalist a prestigious Peabody Award a decade ago for groundbreaking work—including breaking the story of the 2014 Boko Haram kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls from Chibok, Nigeria.

Since becoming CEO, Sesay has stewarded the evolution of Okayplayer with the Webby Award-winning podcast, The Almanac of Rap. Hosted by rapper and hip-hop expert Donwill, episodes are part conversation, part history lesson and part entertainment—featuring influential artists, producers and those steeped in the rich history of hip-hop. Sesay considers it a sister offering to Okayplayer’s Afrobeats Intelligence podcast with Joey Akan, an award-winning journalist Sesay says has deep relationships in the music industry and with the biggest stars in Afrobeats.

Sesay says AM’s mission is to “make sure that every corner of the world sees African talent, sees our efforts, appreciates our voices and our stories.”

Though Sesay was born in the UK and now lives in the U.S., she lived in Sierra Leone between the ages of 7 to 16 before moving back to London. It’s an experience she says had a profound effect on her view of the world.

“For a large part of my youth, teenage years and maybe even up until my early 30s, I don’t think I fully appreciated… the blessing of having moved around and existed in such different cultures and what those experiences have meant for me and the person that I am today,” she says. 

“I’m so grateful that all three of those cultures are part of my background, but especially so that I spent my formative years in Sierra Leone in West Africa, which, for my entire life… has been sort of in the bottom tenth of the world’s poorest countries.” 

She points out that Sierra Leone is “still battling forces of misogyny and great gender inequities,” noting how this has shaped her view on gender dynamics and how she moves through the world. “I refuse to be held back by those same forces,” she says.

When Sesay joined OkayMedia, she deliberately changed the name to Areya, which means “sunshine” in Yoruba, one of the largest single languages in sub-Saharan Africa.

She says the company experienced some turmoil before she joined, shrouding it in a bit of darkness. To her, it was just begging for a fresh start, and a name change was a powerful way of doing that.  

“When I came to find out that [Areya] meant ‘sunshine,’ it felt so right, given where the company had been and where I was trying to take it,” she says. “Beyond that… I felt it spoke to a bigger point of what we’re trying to do around Black culture and Black stories and voices and move us from the margins, from the shadows and the corners, to center stage and to the light.”

For Sesay, sunshine is synonymous with joy, something she feels is desperately needed right now. “We need so much more Black joy right now because things are tough, things are frightening, things feel dark. And so to have that as your mission, to combat that and to bring light, that’s the work I want to be doing.”

Photo courtesy of Isha Sesay

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.” ~Mark Twain

Let me set the scene.

It’s a blistering summer day in Miami—the kind where the humidity hugs you tighter than your ex at a high school reunion, and the air feels like you’re swimming through warm soup. Not exactly the kind of weather that makes you want to move, let alone sweat through a surprise death-match workout on Muscle Beach.

But there I was.

The trainer—clearly a drill sergeant in a past life—barks out: “One more rep and we’re done!”

Ah, yes. The famous last words of every group fitness class ever.

Spoiler: We were not done.

That “one more rep” turned into ten more exercises, each more punishing than the last. By the end, I was convinced my legs had filed for emancipation. My tank top could’ve been used to mop the floor. And yet… beneath the exhaustion was a wild, inexplicable sense of aliveness.

As we collapsed onto the grass post-torture, I tilted my head to the sky—not for inspiration, but perhaps divine rescue. Instead, I got clouds. Big, moody ones, rolling in fast.

Now, as a Miami local, I knew what was coming. Rain. In five minutes, give or take.

Our group—equal parts sweaty and semi-traumatized—decided to grab food at a nearby Greek spot six blocks away. It would’ve been an easy call… if the weather weren’t about to turn into a tropical tantrum.

And that’s when the debate began: “To Uber or not to Uber?”

That was the moment.

That was the question that cracked open something bigger than I expected.

Because I found myself thinking—not practically, but existentially: What would make the better story?

Ubering dry and comfortable? Or walking into the storm, drenched and laughing?

You can guess which one I chose.

We set off on foot.

The first raindrops were tentative, almost polite. Then came the downpour. The real deal. Within moments, we were soaked to the skin—but free.

We splashed through puddles. We screamed. We laughed like kids who were allowed to stay up past bedtime.

When we finally burst into the restaurant—sopping wet, windswept, and grinning—we looked like a group of joyful chaos incarnate. No one cared about how they looked. No one regretted the walk.

Because we didn’t just choose a meal. We chose a memory.

So now I’ll ask you the same thing I asked myself: What would make the better story?

Not the easier one. Not the polished one. Not the one that keeps you neat and unbothered.

The better story. The one with heart and risk and color. The one where you come alive—even if you get a little messy in the process.

We tend to make choices based on comfort or control. We pick what’s convenient. Predictable. Safe. But the stories we remember—and the ones we’re proud to tell—usually start with a moment of uncertainty.

A leap. A yes. A “Why not?”

Maybe it’s the relationship that felt like a risk but turned into something real.

Maybe it’s the day you finally stood up for yourself, even though your voice trembled.

Maybe it’s the job you didn’t feel ready for but said yes to anyway.

Or maybe, like me, it’s just a walk in the rain that reminded you how alive you really are.

Your life is made up of stories.

And every day, you’re writing the next line.

So what will it be today? Will you play it safe? Or will you choose the version of this day—the version of yourself—that you’ll be proud to look back on?

About Danielle Dam

Danielle Dam is a life and leadership coach, speaker, and founder of Coach Dam LLC. Through her signature program, From Unseen to Unforgettable (U2U), she helps ambitious yet overwhelmed women stop living on autopilot and start leading lives that actually feel as good as they look. After years of chasing external validation, Danielle now empowers others to reconnect with their truth, rewrite old patterns, and build a life rooted in purpose, presence, and personal power. Learn more or connect with her at coachdam.com or on Instagram @Danielle_coachdam.

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“Vulnerability is not oversharing. It’s sharing with people who have earned the right to hear our story.” ~Brené Brown

Earlier this year, I found myself in a place I never imagined: locked in a psychiatric emergency room, wearing a paper wristband, surrounded by strangers in visible distress. I wasn’t suicidal. I hadn’t harmed anyone. I’d simply told the truth—and it led me there.

What happened began, in a way, with writing.

I’m in my seventies, and I’ve lived a full life as a filmmaker, teacher, father, and now a caregiver for my ninety-six-year-old mother. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve also felt something slipping. A quiet sense that I’m no longer seen. Not with cruelty—just absence. Like the world turned the page and forgot to bring me along.

One day in therapy, I said aloud what I’d been afraid to name: “I feel like the world’s done with me.”

My therapist listened kindly. “Why don’t you write about it?” she said.

So I did.

I began an essay about age, invisibility, and meaning—what it feels like to move through a culture that doesn’t always value its elders. I called it The Decline of the Elders, and it became one of the hardest things I’ve ever written.

Each sentence pulled something raw out of me. I wasn’t just writing; I was reliving. My mind circled through memories I hadn’t fully processed, doubts I hadn’t admitted, losses I hadn’t grieved. I’d get up, pace, sit down again, write, delete, rewrite. It was as if I were opening an old wound that had never really healed. The pain was real—and so was the urgency to understand it.

Then came the eye injection—a regular treatment for macular degeneration. This time, it didn’t go well. My eye throbbed, burned, and wouldn’t stop watering. Eventually, both eyes blurred. Still, I sat there trying to write, blinking through physical and emotional pain, trying to finish what I had started.

Everything hurt—my vision, my body, my sense of purpose. I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t know how to live with what I was feeling.

So I called 911.

“This isn’t an emergency,” I told the dispatcher. “I just need to talk to someone. A hotline or counselor—anything.”

She connected me to the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline—a lifeline for people in imminent danger of harming themselves. If you are suicidal, please call. It can save your life. My mistake was using it for something it’s not designed for.

 I spoke with a kind young man and told him the truth: I was in therapy. I was writing something painful. I was overwhelmed but safe. I just needed a voice on the other end. Someone to hear me.

Then came the knock at the door.

Three police officers. Calm. Polite. But firm.

“I’m okay,” I said. “I’m not a danger. I just needed someone to talk to.”

That didn’t matter. Protocol had been triggered.

They escorted me to the squad car and drove me to the psychiatric ER. I felt powerless and embarrassed, unsure how a simple call had escalated so quickly.

They took me to the psychiatric ER at LA County General.

No beds. Just recliner chairs lined up in a dim, humming room. I was searched. My belongings were taken. I was assigned a chair and handed a bean burrito. They offered medication if I needed it. One thin blanket. A buzzing TV that never turned off.

I didn’t want sedation. I didn’t want a distraction. I just sat with it—all of it.

And around me, others sat too: a man curled into himself, shaking; a young woman staring blankly into space; someone muttering unintelligibly to no one at all. Real pain. Raw pain. People who seemed completely lost in it.

That’s when the shame hit me.

I didn’t belong here, I thought. I wasn’t like them. I had a home. A therapist. A sense of self, however fractured. I hadn’t tried to hurt anyone. I’d just asked to be heard. And yet there I was—taking up space, resources, attention—while others clearly needed it more.

But that too was a kind of false separation. Who was I to say I didn’t belong? I’d called in desperation. I’d lost perspective. My crisis may have looked different, but it was real.

Eventually, a nurse came to interview me. I told her everything—the writing, the injection, the spiral I’d been caught in. She listened. And sometime after midnight, they let me go.

My wife picked me up. Quiet. Unsure. I didn’t blame her. I barely knew what had just happened myself.

Later that night, I sat again in the chair where it had all started. My eyes ached less. But I was stunned. And strangely clear.

The experience hadn’t destroyed me. It had initiated me.

I also realized how naïve I’d been. I hadn’t researched alternatives. I hadn’t explored my real options. I’d reached for the most visible solution out of emotional exhaustion. That desperation wasn’t weakness—it was a symptom of a deeper need I hadn’t fully acknowledged.

And I learned something I’ll never forget:

Vulnerability is powerful, but it’s not always safe.

I used to think that honesty was always the best path. That if I opened up, someone would meet me there with compassion. And often that’s true. But not always. Systems aren’t built for subtlety. Institutions can’t always distinguish between emotional honesty and risk.

And not every person is a safe place for our truth. Some people repeatedly minimize our pain or dismiss our feelings. We might long for their validation, but protecting ourselves means recognizing when someone isn’t willing or able to give it.

Since then, I’ve kept writing. I’ve kept feeling. But I’ve also learned to be more discerning.

Now I ask myself:

• Is this the right moment for this truth?
• Is this person or space able to hold it?
• Am I seeking connection—or rescue?

There’s no shame in needing help. But there is wisdom in learning how to ask for it, and who to ask.

I still believe in truth. I still believe in tenderness. But I also believe in learning how to protect what’s sacred inside us.

So if you’re someone who feels deeply—who writes, reflects, or breaks open in unexpected ways—this is what I want you to know:

You are not weak. You are not broken. But you are tender. And tenderness needs care, not containment—care from people you can trust to honor it.

Give your truth a place where it can be held, not punished. And if that place doesn’t yet exist, build it—starting with one safe person, one honest conversation, one page in your journal. Word by word. Breath by breath.

Because your pain is real. Your voice matters.

And when shared with care, your truth can still light the way.

About Tony Collins

Tony Collins is a documentary filmmaker, educator, and writer whose work explores creativity, caregiving, and personal growth. He is the author of: Windows to the Sea—a moving collection of essays on love, loss, and presence. Creative Scholarship—a guide for educators and artists rethinking how creative work is valued. Tony writes to reflect on what matters—and to help others feel less alone.

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Thomas Edison recorded himself reciting “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on his phonograph in 1878. But it wasn’t until the 1930s that audiobooks truly emerged, primarily serving the visually impaired and those recovering from strokes. 

In 2010 only 6,200 audiobooks were published, and a 2012 Pew Research report found that just 11% of Americans aged 16 and older had consumed at least one audiobook that year. By 2021, the number of published audiobooks had surged to roughly 74,000, and Edison Research reported in 2024 that 52% of U.S. adults have tried an audiobook—translating to 137 million Americans—with 38% saying they have listened to one in the past year. This significant growth is attributed to several factors, such as the appeal of multitasking and technology accessibility with smartphones and streaming services.

However, despite their widespread appeal, audiobooks are sometimes viewed as a lazy means to an end. Traditional reading is often celebrated for its cognitive advantages, but could audiobooks offer similar brain-boosting benefits?

To explore this, I spoke with neuroscientist Paul J. Zak, Ph.D., whose lab conducted extensive research on the effects of storytelling on the brain. Here are some of the benefits of audiobooks.

1. Audiobooks Can Release Feel-Good Chemicals

As social beings, the human brain is wired for storytelling. Our ancestors relied on stories for millennia to share culture, gain wisdom and build relationships. So it makes sense that an engaging, memorable narrative would have a positive effect on our brains, releasing dopamine and oxytocin, as Zak’s research shows. These neurochemicals, linked to pleasure, motivation and social connection, have what Zak calls a “high social-emotional value.” 

In his book, Immersion: The Science of the Extraordinary and the Source of Happiness, Zak explains that his lab’s research discovered audiobooks can have more value neurologically than reading a physical book because the brain will simulate “the emotions and actions in a narrative.” 

The NeuroLeadership Institute states that there’s a link between emotionally powerful stories and memory recall, thanks to the release of dopamine in our brains. This is similar to how we vividly recall significant personal events, such as weddings or graduations, while struggling to remember mundane information, such as what we ate for breakfast yesterday morning. 

But studies suggest for the listener to emotionally connect to an audiobook, the narrator must skillfully use tone, voice modulation and character portrayal.

In my listening experience, I’ve shelved audiobooks or opted to read the physical book instead due to a flat narrator or storyline. Yet when the plot and narrator align harmoniously, my mind creates vivid mental imagery and forms a stronger attachment to the characters.

2. They can help us feel less lonely

I play audiobooks most when I’m alone because I find another human’s voice comforting. Studies indicate that audiobooks can help us feel less lonely and that readers tend to avoid machine-generated recordings, preferring a human voice.

Zak says this preference is because of the human voice’s timbre and tone variations. 

And research shows that our brains are wired to recognize and respond to vocal signals, which is part of what makes human voices more compelling to us than that of a robot’s.

3. They can have cognitive benefits

Audiobooks have the potential to improve vocabulary and comprehension. Supporting this, a study in TheScientist determined that the brain’s neural activity reacts the same way whether a word is listened to or read. 

This has real-world implications, too. Researchers investigated whether audiobook technology could improve reading comprehension and enjoyment in adult learners with low-level reading skills. The study focused on 27 adult students working on their GED, with reading levels equivalent to grades 2-7. Participants were divided into two groups: one used an audiobook and text version of a Brothers Grimm fairytale, while the control group used only the text version. 

The findings indicated that audiobook technology helped adult learners improve their reading comprehension skills as well as their enjoyment of reading.  In this way, audiobooks, like Gutenberg’s printing press, can democratize access to the written word.

4. They’re good for multi-tasking and time optimization

The brain can simultaneously process auditory information and visual-motor tasks, according to multiple resource theory. This is why audiobooks can be well-suited to multitasking: They provide mental stimulation without requiring focused visual attention.

Charvi Agarwal, co-founder of Tales.so, an app that transforms bestselling books into podcast-style episodes, points out that audiobooks offer a way to “turn passive time into purposeful learning or inspiration,” transforming mundane activities into opportunities for cognitive engagement.

Downsides to audiobooks

One common complaint about audiobooks is the time commitment involved. It’s not always easy to dedicate eight or more hours to a single title, particularly with non-fiction, where repetition or often flat narrative structure can lead to disengagement.

After becoming a mother, Agarwal struggled to find time for audiobooks, so she used her data science and product strategy background to condense them into easily consumable 30-60-minute podcast-like episodes. 

“This reduces cognitive fatigue and helps listeners finish without needing multiple sessions or losing track of context,” she says. “Instead of page-by-page summaries, we focus on the most relevant and applicable insights from a book. Whether it’s a single-host narrative or a dynamic conversation between two hosts, each episode is crafted to be engaging, useful and easy to apply.” Currently, her Tales app boasts a library with thousands of titles. 

Another drawback is the tendency to tune out. Zak contends that engaging audiobooks can hold our attention due to the brain’s emotional responsiveness. Still, even as an avid audiobook consumer, he admits his own comprehension can sometimes be lower than with traditional reading. His solution is to rewind and re-listen to important sections or a book in its entirety, just as you might rewatch a movie to catch nuances missed the first time.

Where to access audiobooks

Audible is a popular audiobook source, but I recommend exploring the library apps Libby and Hoopla. These platforms offer access to thousands of free audiobooks (and ebooks) with a library card. Popular titles almost always have wait times, so this isn’t the system for those wanting instant gratification, but it’s still possible to rotate through a decent amount of content per year. (Here is a tutorial that teaches you how to use the Libby app.)

Spotify Premium also includes 15 hours of audiobook listening per month, with a selection of over 250,000 titles.

For those interested in trying audiobooks in a shorter format, Tales.so offers 10 free books then $9.99/month or $69 for a lifetime subscription. (Agarwal kindly offered readers of this article six months of free access with the coupon code SUCCESS100.)

Ultimately, the goal is to find an audiobook format and platform that works for you. With so many available options, it really is the golden age of audio.

Photo courtesy of ViDI Studio/Shutterstock

To be queer is to reinvent yourself. To toss aside the self-image that was handed to you as an infant, to craft a new identity — and maybe even choose a new name. And yet, anyone who joins the LGBTQIA+ community has to reckon with the weight of the past.

Lately, I’ve been obsessing over the concept of queer generational trauma: the pain passed down to us from our ancestors, which we bequeath in turn to those who come after us. It feels like a strange concept at first. Most of us aren’t necessarily raised in queer families, and we don’t grow up steeped in the history of the struggle for liberation. (In part, because the rich and powerful do everything in their power to keep it that way.)

But if queer culture is real, something that is passed down and continues across lifetimes, then queer generational trauma must also be a thing. You can’t pass down culture without also sharing the pain that birthed it. And the same way that queer culture infuses us with resilience and strength for the battles ahead, embodying the pain of our forebears reminds us of the reason we have to fight in the first place. Both things are gifts, in different ways.

In my upcoming novel Lessons in Magic and Disaster, a trans woman named Jamie teaches her heartbroken mother Serena, a lesbian, how to do magic. The more I wrote, the more I delved into Serena’s grief and rage, which meant doing some research about the challenges lesbians faced in the 1990s and 2000s. That gave me insight into the transphobia Jamie faces here and now. I started reading up on the subject of  Jamie’s PhD dissertation, which deals with (almost certainly) queer authors and artists of the 1730s and 1740s.

What I found knocked me sideways: an ornate tapestry of repression and punishment, stretching back 300 years. Same shit, different decades (or centuries). In particular, I was startled to discover just how similar the fuckery aimed at 1990s lesbians was to the dehumanizing tactics trans people are facing today. People warned that lesbians could not be trusted with children, and in some famous cases like Bottoms v Bottoms, courts took children away from their lesbian parents. Lesbians were threatened with violence, and one lesbian bar was fire-bombed in Atlanta. Books like Heather Has Two Mommies faced the same attempted censorship as Genderqueer.

Meanwhile, artists of the Georgian era, like the gender-nonconforming actor/writer Charlotte Charke, had their gender expression and sexuality scrutinized and faced similar punishments as today’s queers. At one point, an utterly penniless Charke could only get work as an actor if she wrote to the newspapers reassuring audiences she was no longer performing male roles, in male garb.

My small, intimate family story was becoming something much bigger: a document of historical pain.

Obviously not all queer people have queer biological parents. Still, making Jamie a second-generation queer, raised by a lesbian couple among other queer families, turned out to be a fruitful way of thinking about how the weight of past moral injury seeps into our bones and sinews. The struggle for liberation carries on from generation to generation, and the scars of past battles continue to affect us in the present. Jamie says she was raised in a household that was warm, loving, and paranoid — because of the ever-present fear that the shitheads could arrive at any moment. Because your family might not be safe even in a progressive city. Jamie’s queer birth family felt like a way of literalizing a metaphor, or making an abstract phenomenon more concrete.

The framework of “generational trauma” (also called “legacy trauma,” “transgenerational trauma” or “intergenerational trauma“) was developed to talk about the descendants of survivors of the Holocaust, Japanese internment, chattel slavery, and other atrocities. There’s some evidence suggesting trauma can actually be passed down epigenetically to one’s descendants, because our bodies store and transmit stress, but the science on that is far from settled.
Social work professor and mental health expert Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart defines historical trauma as “cumulative emotional and psychological wounding over the lifespan and across generations, emanating from massive group trauma,” such as massacres and other genocidal acts aimed at Indigenous people, and adds that this trauma is accompanied by unresolved grief.

In my experience, queer generational trauma seems to operate in a few different ways:

1. Many of us have depended on elders for guidance and encouragement. These elders put on a brave face but inevitably bequeathed to us their memories of past mistreatment, often in spite of their own best intentions.

2. There’s the gagging ouroboros of history: At a certain point, you have to realize you’re beating your fists against a wall that bears the indents of countless fists, going back forever.

3. And finally, many of us struggle to find community and feel disconnected from those who came before, which ironically makes the weight of history harder to bear.

When I started volunteering for tiny indie queer publishing ventures 25 years ago, I loved the intensity of the people I was working with. The whimsy, the hunger for transgressive storytelling. It took a long time to realize how many of the people around me had been through stuff I could barely imagine and had lost more than I could ever know, including the AIDS pandemic and the Reagan-Bush onslaught. All around me, people were devouring life as if they’d been hungry forever.

But when I think about encountering the lingering toxic waste of past trauma, what I remember is being around trans people who’d transitioned earlier than me, and feeling like they were kind of uptight. Judgy, even. The ways they tried to police my own self-presentation and instruct me on the “right” way to be trans and to talk about myself. One trans woman, only a few years further along in her transition than me, refused to be seen in public with me because two trans women standing together would attract too much of the wrong attention. Trans women lectured me on the foundation garments I should wear to pad my hips, as if there was something wrong with my own pre-estrogen body shape. They obsessed about “passing,” about embodying various femme stereotypes.

I found myself rebelling against my own elders by being more outrageous and colorful, not less. I slowly came to understand they were trying to protect me — albeit in the most fucked-up way possible.

Some of this behavior was because they’d come out during a time when trans people had to follow a strict rulebook or else be prevented from transitioning. But much of this was rooted in hypervigilance, low self-esteem, anxiety, depression. The memory of past discrimination and abuse expressing itself as a kind of grouchiness and strictness. It took me a long time to realize the bad advice I received from older trans people was their own long-buried stress bubbling up to their surface. As with all trauma, generational trauma causes all these — hypervigilance, anxiety, depression and low self-esteem — which can appear outwardly like being a tightly-wound jerk.

Coming out in the late 1990s and early 2000s meant I arrived at the start of a long period of greater acceptance, peppered with setbacks like the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition H. The people who came before me were burdened with the knowledge that this never lasts.

It’s not that queer history repeats itself; it’s more like queer people are trapped on a super heavy pendulum that swings back and forth between acceptance — or perhaps indulgence — and hatred. Like the Scissor Sisters, people simply cannot make up their minds whether we should live or die.

And I’m starting to feel as though we have a very limited ability to shift the momentum of that pendulum. In this, we are in the same situation as many other marginalized groups, except that there is a particular disgust and loathing buried in many people’s psyches for those of us whose sexuality or gender expressions challenge easy expectations about what our bodies mean and what they are for.

Nobody ever told me the pendulum would swing back in a hateful direction. Nobody told me not to take the good times for granted, not to count on more and more acknowledgment of the vital role that queers creators play in shaping culture.

What I did hear, again and again, was: Don’t sell out. Don’t compromise who you are to go “mainstream.” Do not ever turn your back on your community or take your community for granted. Those tiny indie queer magazines and book publishers I mentioned earlier, whose editorial stuff I was fortunate to join, were constantly sending out warnings about the folly of assuming that white patriarchal capitalism could be on our side.

So now I’m in the position of trying to be there for younger trans people, or in some cases, trans people my own age who are just starting their own transitions. I organize local get-togethers for trans folks, and I also try to be a comforting presence in other ways. What I try not to do is overwhelm anyone with the shit I went through back in the 2000s: the microaggressions and macroaggressions, the job discrimination, the stalking and harassment. It’s not like they don’t know or as if this isn’t still happening to lots of people today. But the last thing I would ever want to do is make already anxious people more anxious in service of centering myself. (And of course, I try extra hard not to judge or police anybody, because fuck that.)

Still, mentorship necessarily involves an element of sharing trauma. To let people know they’re not alone and they’re not imagining any of this bullshit. Part of being supportive to newer trans and queer people is teaching them whatever survival strategies I’ve learned, and those survival strategies are rooted in trauma. I’m trying to be there for others, the same way others were there for me when I started out, but hopefully without sharing quite as much pain along the way.

I started out by saying queer generational trauma exists because of the same reasons queer culture exists, but I want to turn that on its head and point out that along with the memories of hard times, we are also passing down generational wealth.

I can read about Miss Major and Sylvia Rivera. I can read the writings of James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Justin Chin, and countless others. There is so much beautiful artwork, so much indelible music. The riches we share are so much greater than the memories of hardship. And I see queer artists today building on that legacy in so many ways, saying: Let them try to erase us. We are handing down our stories and dreams along with our trauma, and those things are often inseparable.

Even the realization that we are the inheritors of pain is its own form of treasure, because it’s a story about survival, and it reminds us to be kinder to ourselves.

Every generation wants, and deserves, to live freer than the last. We don’t just fight for our own ability to breathe easy, but also so that the people who come after us won’t ever have to deal with the shit we’ve marinated in.

Lessons in Magic and Disaster by Charlie Jane Anders comes out August 19 and is available for preorder.

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I once asked ChatGPT to write a poem about a total solar eclipse in the style of Walt Whitman. It returned a dozen couplets of cliches that touched nothing, changed nothing in me. The AI had the whole of the English language at its disposal — a lexicon surely manyfold the poet’s — and yet Whitman could conjure up cosmoses of feeling with a single line, could sculpt from the commonest words an image so dazzlingly original it stops you up short, spins you around, leaves the path of your thought transformed.

An AI may never be able to write a great poem — a truly original poem — because a poem is made not of language but of experience, and the defining aspect of human experience is the constant collision between our wishes and reality, the sharp violation of our expectations, the demolition of our plans.

We call this suffering.

Suffering is the price we pay for a consciousness capable of love and the loss of love, of hope and the devastation of hope. Because suffering, like consciousness itself, is a full-body phenomenon — glands secreting fear, nerves conducting loneliness, neurotransmitters recoiling with regret — a disembodied pseudo-consciousness is fundamentally incapable of suffering and that transmutation of suffering into meaning we call art: An algorithm will never know anything beyond the execution of its programmed plan; it is fundamentally spared the failure of its aims because failure can never be the successful execution of the command to fail.

We create — poems and paintings, stories and songs — to find a language for the bewilderment of being alive, the failure of it, the fulness of it, and to have lived fully is not to have spared yourself.

In his exquisite reckoning with what makes life worth living, Nobel laureate Elias Canetti captures this in a diary entry from the late spring of 1942. Under the headline “very necessary qualifications for a good Persian storyteller,” he copies out a passage from an unidentified book he is reading:

In addition to having read all the known books on love and heroism, the teller of stories must have suffered greatly for love, have lost his beloved, drunk much good wine, wept with many in their sorrow, have looked often upon death and have learned much about birds and beasts. He must also be able to change himself into a beggar or a caliph in the twinkling of an eye.

A generation before Canetti, the philosopher-poet Rainer Maria Rilke articulated the same essential condition for creativity in his only novel, reflecting on what it takes to compose a great poem, but speaking to what it takes to create anything of beauty and substance, anything drawn from one life to touch another:

For the sake of a few lines one must see many cities, men and things. One must know the animals, one must feel how the birds fly and know the gesture with which the small flowers open in the morning. One must be able to think back to roads in unknown regions, to unexpected meetings and to partings which one has long seen coming; to days of childhood that are still unexplained, to parents that one had to hurt when they brought one some joy and one did not grasp it (it was a joy for someone else); to childhood illness that so strangely began with a number of profound and grave transformations, to days in rooms withdrawn and quiet and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along on high and flew with all the stars — and it is not yet enough if one may think of all of this. One must have memories of many nights of love, none of which was like the others, of the screams of women in labor, and of light, white, sleeping women in childbed, closing again. But one must also have been beside the dying, one must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window and the fitful noises.

Couple with Carl Jung on the relationship between suffering and creativity, then revisit Annie Dillard on creativity and what it takes to be a great writer and Oliver Sacks, writing thirty years before ChatGPT, on consciousness, AI, and our search for meaning.

“It’s not any of ours. Love belongs to itself. It moves how it wants to move and sometimes you catch it, and sometimes you don’t.”

Have you ever loved a friend so much they were your muse? And you loved every part of each other and you had parts that the other lacked. And you inspired each other and your love was a type of insanity and your love worked. The insanity worked. The insanity took care of the both of you and from your love you birthed a third thing. Sometimes an unspoken thing. And you hated each other as much as you loved each other for all the things you had and did not have. And you lived together many times. And he was your muse and he collected his pee in jars and you took care of him not just because you didn’t want him to die but because also he was the most interesting thing about you. Because maybe it made you a good person to take care of him. Like your friendship was the most interesting thing about you. You would go on benders in Miami doing drugs and meeting strangers and letting your love for each other take you anywhere. Take you to strangers houses and weird bars and to the beach at midnight. And your love couldn’t save each other. And your love couldn’t save either of you from time. And your love was a revolution because the way you loved each other brought about a better world between you two. And you were both better for it and also plagued by the insanity of it. Your love could not outrun time. And when your relationship fell apart you grieved in a way you had never grieved before. And then you found yourself at this play called Bad Stars and the play was about a love story all too similar to your own. And the play was about what to do in the ruins of such a type of heartbreak. A love story with no sex.

I have to tell you. I have seen Bad Stars twice now. Before it ends its run at Collapsable Hole, I will have seen it three times. I would see it five times if I could. Twice I’ve seen this play, twice I’ve left the theatre in tears, because it is doing what it is saying it is doing. It is saying a lot. Bad Stars is a play about a love story and what to do in the ruins of that love. It is a play about a love story and worms. It is a story about how to write a story. About friends breaking up and giving this story to the audience, to someone. Knowing they’ll know what to do with the ruins. I’m in ruin and I’m in awe. I got wrapped up in the slapstick and creativity of it all and then I got punched in the gut. I got devastated, because it was a story all too true.

Jess Barbagallo and Bobbi Salvör Menuez in Bad Stars, photo by Maria Baranova

I’ve never read Sam Shepard’s True West and I don’t need to. Bad Stars, an adaptation written and directed by Amanda Horowitz is everything I need to see and hear and be consumed by right now. Bad Stars is an adaptation and then some. Two brothers writing a movie about worms. But then chaos ensues. But then, things slice off and off creating new things. Wriggiling scenes and characters. Writhing spurts of language that I hold onto. I can’t shake this play. I wake up and think “It was Chester.”

Bad Stars is about the disintegration of boundaries in every form you can conceive. Time, language, plot, setting, character, performance, relationships, personhood, the end of the world, revolution. Where things stop and begin and where they don’t. What that does to us as people. What it does to love.

I walk into the set and immediately I’m brought into the world Horowitz is setting up for us. A painter sits on an elevated platform, with an easel and paints and canvas. She’s painting. Her paintings decorate the set around us. We’re in it. All of us are waiting. Her paints are desert colored, dusty hues of gray, blue, brown, and muted reds. When does the play begin? Is it when the painter makes her first stroke?

Adi Blaustein Rejto in Bad Stars, photo by Maria Baranova

Bad Stars introduces itself to us through sounds. Chicken sounds, words being yelled behind the walls surrounding us. “Boyyyysssss” in a southern drawl is repeated. Then, almost Romeo and Juliet style, the two brothers appear above our heads. Talking to each other from across the room, high up. Coyote (Bobbi Salvör Menuez) opens a curtain, Cricket (Jess Barbagallo) pokes his head out over the wall that encircles us. They talk about Chester, a third thing, love. How love is like animals, like children. Love is its own thing. I get caught in the net of language. They address us, the audience. “Stop saying you’re alone, all these people are here”. This play is about the blurring and the retelling of our relationships. About contending with time, with clocks.

There are five characters in this play. The Painter, the brothers, Cricket and Coyote, Macrame Mama and Papa. Papa. Pasta. Papa Pasta. He’s a drunk dad. He’s drunk and in the desert and he’s got two sons. One good. One bad. He says so as he stumbles on stage. The painter sits silently painting.

Bad Stars is like stage direction poetry. Another boundary played with. When does a play become a poem and when does a poem become a play? The actors speak in poems. The brothers enter the stage, moving like worms on the ground. I’m never lost in this production. Each utterance brings me to the next place I need to be. Each monologue, every line, builds the history of these brothers up around them. They are in the desert and there is an ocean in the desert.

Two characters in one. Papa Pasta and Macrame Mama are played by the same actor, Pete Simpson. Another disintegration of boundaries? The actor does an amazing job of embodying the two and adding to the playful world of Bad Stars. Crassness and earnestness and camp erupt from Simpson’s performance. There are amazing feats of the body happening throughout the production. At one point Cricket is on the floor, flagellating like a worm while lip syncing drag style “Teenage Dirtbag” by Wheatus. I can’t stop thinking in my head “this is genius.” There is insane poetry of the body, of the eye, of the spirit in this production. Done through the overlapping and breaking down of language, movement, ideas.

Pete Simpson in Bad Stars, photo by Maria Baranova

The ethos of Bad Stars is repeated again and again in different ways through the splitting and slices. It is given different points of views from all characters. It is delivered in beautiful and heartbreaking ways. The brothers lip sync to “Highwayman” by The Highwaymen and facilitate a flow of cash throughout the audience. Passing out dollars and taking them back. I’m smiling at this act of play while the lyrics of “Highwayman” reverberate around the room. The song is about time, death, and again-ness. Much so like the play. Papa Pasta delivers a monologue on getting on the wrong train getting stuck on the wrong train. Coyote delivers a monologue about loneliness, charm, and stars. What if Cricket was the only one to ever see Coyote for who he is? To give him redemption again and again. Cricket says to Coyote “I want to write a script that makes you cry, it’s so good.” Horowitz has done this. There is a rhythm to the production where I get swept up in the comedy, in the dadaism, surreal, world-making, and dissection of language. Suddenly the rug is pulled out from under me and I am face to face with an emotional truth that makes me want to drop to my knees and sob. There is an insane honesty wrapped up in the mechanizations of language and production and play.

This play is a blueprint of what to do with this type of heartbreak that is so familiar to many of us. To me at least. It felt like God. Horowoitz, producer Max Mooney, and the cast do a brilliant job of buttering you up with playful language, lovable characters, magic tricks of the stage and then devastating in the way I needed to be. It was like a mirror. It was like a tutorial video on what to do in the ruins of these relationships we have. I didn’t feel alone.

Jess Barbagallo and Bobbi Salvör Menuez in Bad Stars, photo by Maria Baranova

In the final scene, Macrame Mama comes home from her vacation on a fishing boat in Alaska and sees what the boys have done to her home while she is away. She takes everything in. She tells the painter to move, that she, Mama, wants to be the artist now.

“This canvas is like a net I throw over the ruins and see what it picks up.”

Which feels like this play. Which feels like art. Which feels like all we can do with the experiences given to us by love and life and how to share it with others. I am grateful this was in Horowitz’s net and that she gave it to us on this canvas.

This play is about two brothers cut from the same root. Estranged but now brought back together to write a movie. A movie about worms and love. A love story about friendship and the family you choose. When they were kids they would channel their energy to say and do the same thing. They would play games. Their love was a third thing that you couldn’t catch or own. Like children. Like animals. It was Chester.

Bad Stars runs through Sunday, June 8 at Collapsable Hole. 

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