Abdi Nazemian

First Draft Episode #194: Abdi Nazemian

JUNE 4, 2019

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE

Abdi Nazemian, TV writer, producer of films like Call Me By Your Name, and author of Like a Love Story, The Authentics, and The Walk-In Closet, talks about discovering gay icons in the time before the internet, putting all your obsessions in your work, crying in coffee shops, and writing about history from an emotional standpoint, so we can repeat the best of it.

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Sarah Enni:   Hello Listener Club member. You are about to hear the full conversation between myself, Sarah Enni, and Abdi Nazemian. Abdi is a TV writer, a screenwriter, a producer of movies like Call Me By Your Name and his most recent young adult novel, Like a Love Story, is out now.

He is such a shining light. Abdi lives in Los Angeles and that's how I know him from various book events. He was so instantly kind and warm and open and fun to be around. Then I got the chance to read Like a Love Story and I was utterly blown away. It is such a beautiful book. It's so charming and it's also incredibly personal and emotional for Abdi.

So during our conversation we got a little misty eyed talking about it, and about his history with Madonna, and realizing he was gay and coming out during the height of the AIDS crisis.All that and more in this conversation. It was really incredible.

Also Abdi's been storytelling in various forms for many years. He's a total pro. So he had a lot of incredible advice about living a creative life and making that personal connection to your work. I really think there's a lot to gain from this conversation. And since you are a Listener Club member, you're getting the chance to hear all of it. Every chair squeak, every fumbled sentence, all of the discussion about having to move from recording in his daughter's bedroom, to his husband's office on account of assorted Los Angeles sounds like gardeners and helicopters, et cetera.

That was super funny, but Abdi really rolled with it and I appreciated that about him. So I'm super, super excited, without further ado, to share the entire conversation with you. All right, so please sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.

Sarah Enni:   All right. Hi, Abdi. How are you?

Abdi Nazemian:    Hey, I'm great.

Sarah Enni:   Good. Can you please describe for the listeners where we are doing this podcast recording right now?

Abdi Nazemian:  We are doing this podcast recording in my daughter Evie's room, which is I think, my favorite room in our house and also the quietest. It's almost like a little tree house here. It was actually an addition. We didn't add this to the house, somebody at some point, it's a very old house for Los Angeles, it's been here almost a hundred years, and it was an addition. So it doesn't feel like the rest of the house. It almost feels like you're in the woods somewhere.

Sarah Enni:    Yeah, it does. And it's beautiful pink decoration. I'm feeling like I'm in love right now.

Abdi Nazemian:   You're feeling like stuffed animals everywhere.

Sarah Enni:  It's bringing me back.

Abdi Nazemian:   Archie Comic art from when I was a kid. A random PJ Harvey poster.

Sarah Enni:  I do love that. I love everything!

Abdi Nazemian:   Every seven year old’s bedroom has a PJ Harvey poster in it, right?

Sarah Enni:  Only the coolest.

Abdi Nazemian:   That's right.

Sarah Enni:   Only the coolest seven year old’s. Okay, so as you know from listening to the podcast, we like to start at the very beginning. So I'd like to hear where were you born and raised?

Abdi Nazemian:  So I was born in Tehran, in Iran, and when I was two years old, the revolution happened. My family left around that time and we went to Paris where I was for five years. And then when I was seven years old, we went to Toronto. And we spent three years there and then when I was ten, we moved to the suburbs of New York, in lovely Scarsdale.

Sarah Enni:    Oh, I was gonna say, which suburb?

Abdi Nazemian:   Sometimes I don't want to say it because the word brings back so many difficult memories. Those are my dark years. And then my family stayed in the New York area and now they live in the city. I went to college on the East Coast and then came here literally the day after graduation, to Los Angeles, where I have lived for 21 years.

Sarah Enni:   Amazing.

Abdi Nazemian:  God, ooh.

Sarah Enni:   Where did you go to college?

Abdi Nazemian:  Columbia. In New York.

Sarah Enni:   And where in the city now...? I mean these are really personal questions, but where in the city do your family live now?

Abdi Nazemian:   My parents live in Mid-Town, like the East Side. But they were in Westchester, in Scarsdale, until I was in college. So I was the first to move to the city, although they spent so much time in the city. And then by the time they moved, by that point so many of my family members moved. I felt like I wanted to be in the film industry. So despite the possibility of having my whole family in the city with me at that point, I was like, "No, I have to be in Hollywood." I felt the call.

Sarah Enni:   Well, okay, we're gonna jump around a little bit more than usual on this conversation because the latest book is so personal.

Abdi Nazemian:   It is very personal, yeah.

Sarah Enni:  So we'll talk a little bit about your childhood when we get to that. But for now I actually just am curious, going back, I didn't realize that you had spent so long in Paris. So you were in Paris until you were about your kids' age.

Abdi Nazemian:   I was in Paris, yeah. My kids are seven now. So I was exactly my kids' age when I left Paris. But also my grandmother, who had left Iran, lived in Nice. And we went back every single summer to the south of France until I was in college. My parents still spend most of their summers in France.

So, even though I left France when I was seven, I would spend most of the summer there. In Toronto I went to a French school. So I feel a little bit like, I wouldn't say I feel French because truthfully the French don't let you in that way. They wouldn't let me be French. But I love France. I love the language. It's very much a part of me.

Sarah Enni:   And I'm trying to keep track of the number of languages that you must then know.

Abdi Nazemian: I know five languages.

Sarah Enni:  Wow.

Abdi Nazemian:   Yeah, which is pretty wild.

Sarah Enni:   At what point in the pecking order did English come in?

Abdi Nazemian:   English came in really early. My whole family was born trilingual, so even though I was born in Iran, we grew up speaking French and English. And when I lived in France, we were sent to an American school and then when I moved to Canada, we were sent to a French school.

So it was like whatever country we were in, they would send us to the non-dominant language school to make sure we kept it up. So those three languages I've been fluent in since I was a kid. And then I studied Spanish in school and did a semester abroad in Italy and picked those two up.

And now my kids go to a Spanish school. So we do all their homework in Spanish so I speak it every day. So Spanish has become really a second language in our home at this point.

Sarah Enni:   Yeah, I love that. I feel like a fool being in Los Angeles and...

Abdi Nazemian:   And not speaking Spanish?

Sarah Enni:    I took eight years of French, which I love.

Abdi Nazemian:    Do you speak it?

Sarah Enni:   I mean I could get by.

Abdi Nazemian:   Tu parles Francais?

Sarah Enni:   Un peu.

Abdi Nazemian:  Un peu! Has she ever spoken French on the podcast? This might be a first!

Sarah Enni:  This is a first.

Abdi Nazemian:  This is a first! No, I love languages and I think language just exposes you to humanity in a different way. It's very empathetic to be able to communicate in a way that's different. There's so much that you can say in one language. It doesn't quite make sense in another in terms of humor and intonation.

Sarah Enni:  And how some languages have such a vast vocabulary for certain parts of life or feelings.

Abdi Nazemian:   Absolutely. I mean in Farsi, our language in Iran, we have two words for different kinds of farts and no word for sex or gay people.

Sarah Enni:   There you go.

Abdi Nazemian:  I mean now we do, they finally came up with a word for gays. But for a long time, for most of my life, there wasn't one.

Sarah Enni:  Or for sex?

Abdi Nazemian:  No. Growing up I remember asking my parents that. There was not an official word for sex. At least that was ever shared with me. I'm sure there's something somewhere. And then other things that there are multiple words for just like in English. One kind of fart.

Sarah Enni:  We really need to address that to be honest. We need to broaden our horizons on that front. So that is really interesting and a lot of moving around. I'm wondering how was reading and writing a part of growing up? You must have been reading in multiple languages too?

Abdi Nazemian:  Yeah, it's funny cause now that I'm so English, most of my reading now is in English and obviously all my writing is in English. I remember I looked back... my brother is kind of the archivist of our family and he had some home videos, and there was a home video of me when I was around seven and I was hanging out with my cousins and we were all speaking French. It rocked my mind cause I was like, "Oh, you mean when we were together we would speak French?" Like, "That's what we chose to speak?"

But yeah, I would read. As a kid, I remember reading a lot of French books. There was this French book series about this little boy, Le Petit Nicolas, that I was obsessed with. But pretty soon, I mean once I was ten years old and I moved to the US, and really in Canada too, it started to switch to English. And I was really obsessed with Archie comic books, hence the Archie art in the room we are doing this podcast in. So I read Archie comics like obsessively, it was next level.

Sarah Enni:   Okay. Abdi, how are you?

Abdi Nazemian:    I'm great.

Sarah Enni:   We have relocated.

Abdi Nazemian:  We are no longer in my daughter's room. We are now in my fiancé’s office.

Sarah Enni:  That was a lovely location but it was little LA busy. So now we're in an office with a wonderful view, but we're gonna just pick right back up where we started from talking about reading books as a kid. I don't know if you felt this way, but I moved around a bunch as a kid and reading was this sort of constant that carried me through it.

Abdi Nazemian:  Yeah, absolutely. For me, reading, and movies really cause I was obsessed with both, but storytelling. I think once I got a little older I understood that fictional stories were really my way of making sense of the world. And my first reading love, I mean when I was really little, we were talking about this French book series that I loved called Le Petit Nicolas, and then there were all the classics. I loved the Ramona books, stuff like that.

But it was really Archie comics that won my heart. I know that might be a controversial choice when talking about reading. People have weird things about comic books, but I love comic books. And I read them, I devoured them. They were so important to me.

I think especially because I moved to America when I was ten and I was very foreign. I looked foreign, I sounded foreign, and I came from a culture that wasn't American. And I really think that something about the kind of Americana of Archie, made me feel like that was the country I wanted to come to. Of course, once I got to America it was very hard to assimilate and make friends. But what book did I just read?

I just read a book that had a line that was something like, "Nobody does Americana, like an immigrant." And I thought it was so smart because there is something about it. I was obsessed with Americana. I loved old Andy Hardy movies and Archie, anything that was wholesome, you know?

I loved Christmas, Christmas movies. My family didn't celebrate Christmas and it felt like this perfect world that I wanted access to.

Sarah Enni:  Do you know Tahereh Mafi? (Author of the Shatter Me series, A Very Large Expanse of Sea, Furthermore, and Whichwood. Listen to Tahereh’s episode of First Draft here)

Abdi Nazemian:  I've met her once at a book festival. I don't know her well.

Sarah Enni:  She's amazing, and talks about this a lot, that she read contemporary novels and that that felt like fantasy to her because it was so unfamiliar to her upbringing and her family that she would read those books and be like, "What would it be like to...?"

Abdi Nazemian:   Isn't that so interesting? And the funny thing is the movies I was obsessed with from the age of ten, I was obsessed with really old movies like kind of golden age of Hollywood, thirties, forties, fifties. And when you think about it, those movies were so old fashioned in terms of their values and representation in so many ways.

And so were Archie comics, and that's what really appealed to me. And it's very interesting cause I was foreign, clearly coming into a realization that I was different and gay, and yet the things that I was really latching onto were old fashioned and wholesome in a lot of ways.

Although now when looking back, I'm like, "God, those old movies weren't wholesome at all." You know, they appealed to me for other reasons, but there's a fantasy to it, right? And a lot of it is about latching onto fantasy.

Sarah Enni:  There's a fantasy element of it, and I'm under watched in this type of movie. But there's some element too, like in I love Lucy, nobody was having sex right? So it kind of wasn't the topic.

Abdi Nazemian:  Yeah, you're right, it kind of took sex off the table, which is more comfortable when you're young and realizing you're gay. But I also think there was something about the kind of duality of internal and external life, which is a lot of what I explore in this book.

Which I think is, at least in my generation of queer men I would say, I won't speak for the whole community, but very appealing. And I think a lot of it has to do with when you grow up, putting on one face for the world and yet knowing you're somebody else inside. Those kinds of people that you would see in old movies were very appealing.

Because you knew that the Judy Garland persona was completely different than the human she was inside. You knew the Joan Crawford persona was different than the person she was inside. And so it was very easy to see yourself in those people cause that duality between interior and exterior were so different.

Whereas for your average heterosexual white male narratives, which is most of what mainstream America was, there was no duality. They get to be the same person inside and out right? Nobody's making them hide. So it's not appealing to me as a viewer. Yet when I see those old movies, I immediately latched on even at the age of ten, which is very young, you know?

Sarah Enni:  And very young to be latching onto a lot of under the surface.

Abdi Nazemian:  Yes. Yes. And this is also, I mean I'm aging myself, but obviously I wrote a book that takes place in 1989 so I've already aged myself. But this was pre-internet. So, the discovery of these people, these films, these works, was not like... you couldn't go on Twitter and be like, "Oh, I'm gay. What are gay people talking about?"

I found these people on my own in very mysterious ways. I would go into the city and buy these magazines about old Hollywood and there would be ads in the back from people who would sell memorabilia and I would write to them and start... It was much harder to discover this kind of media.

Sarah Enni:   Which is interesting because we associate people who love old Hollywood now... there are a lot of gay men who keep us remembering these glamorous old movie stars.

Abdi Nazemian:  We do our best!

Sarah Enni:  Yeah. It is interesting to think that a lot of them did the same path to discovery that you did, right? I'm not explaining this very well, but because you all found the same thing pre-internet, it makes it seem like, "Oh yeah, that was a deep calling."

Abdi Nazemian:   It was. And there was this book that I really love. It's more of an academic book called How to be Gay (by David Halperin) which talks a lot about this exact phenomenon. Of how certain films, or people, or icons, become part of gay language and gay culture. And the mysterious way in which many gay people come to them.

I mean, when as a ten or eleven year old, I became obsessed with Joan Crawford, I didn't know that that was a gay thing. I was seven when I became obsessed with Madonna. I didn't know she would become a gay icon. All I can say now is that there is a mysterious connection between certain books, movies, cultural figures, musicians where, as gay people, we recognize a piece of our own experience in them.

I just read this incredible,... you know that 33 1/3 series about different albums?

This woman, Amy Gentry, wrote one about Boys for Pele, which is a Tory Amos album. I'm also very obsessed with Tori Amos. She talks more about the experience of being a woman. And a lot of it is framed in terms in which things that are traditionally female and things that females and especially teenage girls, are kind of belittled and treated as like disgusting.

Sarah Enni:  Not worth consideration.

Abdi Nazemian:  Not worth consideration. But it also speaks to a lot of gay people's experience in which your sensibility to things that you feel and like, are kind of shoved aside. And I think there are certain figures, I can't explain why when I first listened to a Tori Amos song, I became obsessed.

All I can say is I wasn't the only gay kid who had that experience. It was like something in the way she expressed herself, spoke to that very difficult experience of feeling the person you are is not welcomed into the world at large.

Sarah Enni:  Yeah, well we can talk about that for an hour.

Abdi Nazemian:  It will be an hour of Tori Amos discussions.

Sarah Enni:   Oh my gosh, well, that would be lovely.

Abdi Nazemian:   That's the next book.

Sarah Enni:    Yeah, definitely. But I want to talk a little bit about, there's so much that you've done in film and TV that's not necessarily what we're gonna talk about today. So I want to just talk about the pull to being in a movie and TV, getting into that world and then what eventually led you back to books. So first let's start with when you knew you wanted to tell stories in that way.

Abdi Nazemian:  God, I feel in a deep way I knew I wanted to tell stories when I was very, very young. I would make comic books when I was young. I would write poetry. But it wasn't something that was encouraged in my home or in my culture. So it wasn't something that I recognized as a possible path or calling.

I was lucky enough to go to college in Manhattan, which meant that you could do a lot of really cool jobs and internships. I should write a book just about the jobs I had in college. I was a stylist assistant for these crazy shoots, you know, music videos and fashion shoots. But my last internship was for a film maker, Alan Pakula, who made Sophie's Choice and All the President's Men.

He was amazing. I didn't deal mostly with him. I was the intern who was reading scripts for his head of development, who is now one of my book agents, which is pretty cool. But I felt very strongly, at that point, that film was what I wanted to do. I didn't know what. Like a lot of kids, you think like, "Oh, I want to do something in movies." But it's not until you're in the industry that you even understand what all the jobs are.

But I moved to LA. I knew very few people. That boss at Alan Pakula's company helped me get the UTA job list, which at the time, was the only way to get jobs. Because again, pre-internet. And I applied for every job. It was like a hundred and fifty jobs and I got two calls, and one was from a religious TV station.And would probably have taken that job if there wasn't another one.

And the other one, luckily, was to be an assistant to a producer. And so I took that and I was an assistant for two different producers over the first two years of my time in LA. And mostly I was reading scripts. And it was really the process of reading all these scripts that convinced me that writing was what I wanted to do, and was my way in.

Sarah Enni:  Really?

Abdi Nazemian:   Yeah. Because anything that you do that much, it's like that Malcolm Gladwell theory of practice? (The theory of becoming an expert after spending 10,000 hours doing a thing, which Gladwell outlines in his book, Outliers). Once you read a thousand scripts in two years, or however many I read, you're like, "Oh, it's not brain surgery. Maybe I could do this."

Sarah Enni:  I was gonna say, is it because you read so many bad scripts?

Abdi Nazemian:   Part of it. But I don't want to say it was only. I think actually it's the combination of good and bad. I still read a lot of scripts for work, because I still work as a producer where I work on other people's writing. And I think reading all kinds of scripts is helpful. Reading the great ones can be very helpful. But also reading ones where things don't work is very instructive as well.

So that's what started it off. And I wrote my first script with a friend of mine from college and we just did it for fun. I remember emailing him and being like, "I've read all these scripts and I think we can do it too." And we did. And then one thing led to another and we had about ten years of being a writing partnership. And then, eventually, I mean I still write film and TV and I love it, but I think what led me to books, if you want to jump there?

Sarah Enni:  Yeah, let's go for it!

Abdi Nazemian:    What led me to books really was that it was very evident to me that the kind of personal stories I want to tell, we're going to be very hard to do in film and TV. It's just by nature of the way the industry is set up, where movies and TV shows take millions and millions of dollars to get made. And they usually need movie stars to be green-lit.

And there's this circular conversation in which anytime I would write a piece about an Iranian, they would say, "Well, we have no movie stars to cast it." And then I'm like, "But how can you create a movie star if you never cast us? And when you do make a movie about us, you cast Gael Garcia Bernal, or Selma Hayek, or Alfred Molina." Or you know, "Blah Blah Blah."

So it was very hard and it got to a point where I felt like, "If I'm ever gonna put my name on a piece of writing that feels like it is a true piece of me, then I have to maybe find another form for it.” I suppose I could've tried theater or something, but books just felt like they were the more personal medium. I'm a huge reader. So honestly, in the beginning when I was writing books, felt really afraid.

Sarah Enni:  Really?

Abdi Nazemian:  Oh yeah. It's funny cause I'm friends with so many authors now cause we go on the circuit together and it's so fun. And so many others will tell me that they're afraid of writing screenplays. And I find screenplays much more natural because I think more in dialogue. It's the internal part of books that was hard for me in the beginning.

Sarah Enni:  Yeah. Prose is very complicated.

Abdi Nazemian:  Prose is very complicated. And in scripts, I don't know how many scripts you've read, but a lot is left to the imagination. You're meant to give hints of what a person may be feeling. You certainly should evoke that feeling. But you're not giving the actor their whole internal life, or giving the director their whole visual palette. You're giving enough that it's a blueprint.

And so yeah, when I started writing books, it was really frightening. My first book, in all honesty, is sitting on a shelf and it will never be ready. I'm sure other people have this experience, but I wrote the very, very first book I wrote, I liked it a lot at the time. Like most people like their own first books. But after I finished it, I immediately started writing a second one. And when I showed my agent pages of the second one, he was like, "Why don't we just put the first one away for now? The second one's gonna be better."

Sarah Enni:  So I'm really interested in that because the first published book for you is The Walk-In Closet. And I have questions about that in it being the first thing that you put out in the world as a published book. But I'm interested in what was the first book about?

Abdi Nazemian:  The Walk-In Closet?

Sarah Enni:   The first one.

Abdi Nazemian:   Oh, the first, first book? Well, so the first book I wrote after a couple of years of being an assistant in LA and then being a writer, was about a kid who moves to LA and becomes an assistant. He becomes an assistant to a movie star who he discovers is in the closet.

And it's really the story of him and these other early 20 somethings who had just moved to LA uncovering the sordid nature of this closeted actor's life in which all of these powerful people are making bad things happen to keep the secret.

At the time Hollywood was very different. I haven't even read it in ten years, or however long it's been. At the time, I felt like there really were no "out" celebrities. The world has changed drastically since then. So it probably felt more relevant at the time. But I really did like it.

When I look back at it now, I'm really obsessed with this writer Armistead Maupin and his books, Tales of the City series. And I feel when I look back I'm like, "Oh God. I was just imitating his stuff." I wasn't finding my own voice. And I still feel like I owe him such a debt. Because of all the writers I've read, he's probably one of the ones who's indirectly influenced me the most, and made me feel like I could do it the most.

Because so many of my other favorite writers are like James Baldwin or people I could never even attempt. When I read James Baldwin, I literally want to do something else. I don't want to write anymore cause it's like "What's the point?"

Sarah Enni:   Like we should all be fishing.

Abdi Nazemian:  But there was something about Armistead's style which felt very like pop culture saturated. It felt more like the way I speak and exist in the world. I think a lot of writers, in the beginning, talk a lot about voice, both the writer's voice and the character's voice. But I think a lot of early writers, myself definitely included, you sometimes end up imitating voice in the beginning because you're trying to find your own. And you're obsessed with certain styles and you're like, "Oh let me try that on."

Sarah Enni:  Which I think happens in screenplays too. Right?

Abdi Nazemian:  Oh sure!

Sarah Enni:  You can use the conventions of genre to just feel how the beats of a story go.

Abdi Nazemian:  Absolutely. Absolutely.

Sarah Enni:   It is good for first time writers to almost even on purpose, set out to try that. Try writing a couple of pages of Flannery O'Connor and see how that feels. And then you'll see the ways in which that doesn't fit you right, and you can adjust accordingly.

Abdi Nazemian:    Yeah, absolutely. It's kind of part of the process. And I think in order to get to that point where you have your own voice, you have to stumble a few times. It's really healthy. I mean it's interesting cause my screenwriting career was very similar in the beginning.

My writing partner and I had these amazing managers who I loved. And we were very prolific cause we were young, and had more energy, and we would write something like four or five scripts a year. And usually only one of them would go out. The managers would literally say, "These four we don't really like, and this one we're gonna focus on, and we're gonna double down on that one."

And so I've become very comfortable with the process of putting stuff on a shelf and not feeling like it's a failure. I think writers don't talk about this enough. But I'll talk about it with this book too, because I don't want to imply that this only happens to young writers.

But in between The Authentics, which was my first young adult novel and this one, I pitched many ideas to my editor, which did not fly. And at a certain point I was like, "You know what? I'm just going to take a stab at writing some pages." And I wrote pages and sent them thinking like, "Oh these are great!" And again they were rejected. And so there were lots of attempts at finding the second young adult book, before Like a Love Story came to me.

So I think that writers are people who want to write, and I assume many of your listeners are. Just to be comfortable with the fact that you have to experiment. And you have to take stabs at things that won't work. And that oftentimes those are steps to what you want. And one of those failed attempts, actually I got the Judy character in this book from. So I pulled from that book, extracted her, and she was one of the first things to come in this book. So it's a windy path to the things that work.

Sarah Enni:  And I'm actually really glad that you mentioned that because we don't talk about that all the time. People send out five ideas and their agent is like, "Well it's the right time for this one. Or this one seems like a good follow-up to what you just did." Then you're talking about blowing it out and thinking strategically. More so than just necessarily like, "I have to write this next thing." Having a little bit more of a business mind.

Abdi Nazemian:  That's so true. And sometimes it's in addition to the business mind, it's making peace with the fact that you may have a really good story in you, and it's not yours to tell. Sometimes I've had these ideas where I'm like, "I know this is a good idea!" But then when I try and execute it, it's not flowing right. The voice isn't right. And I'm like, "This might not be my idea to write." Like, "I might not be the person with the right life experience and style to make it work."

This is a very common thing with writers, where you had some idea, you didn't execute it, and then two years later you see it on the bookshelf or in the movies. Then you are like, "I had that idea!" And I'm like, "Yeah, you might've had the idea but you didn't execute it that way." Like, "You didn't write it that way." Every idea is just a kernel, but is it yours to take to the finish line.

Sarah Enni:  And tons of people can come to the same idea, right?

Abdi Nazemian:   Of course!

Sarah Enni:   Which is why on Twitter, a hundred people tell the same joke and it's like, "Well yeah, because that's not a big leap, but it's about the execution of a whole vision, a whole aesthetic, all of that stuff.” That's where you actually build your career.

Abdi Nazemian:  Absolutely. Absolutely. I used to teach screenwriting at UCLA. And there was one student - oh god, I hope he's not listening - but there was one student who refused to share his idea with the class, and it was a writing workshop, it wasn't a lecture.

And I told him, "This class doesn't work if you guys don't share your work. If you're worried, you can take it to the writer's guild, you can register it." It was a ten session class. And finally, close to the end, he finally shared his idea. And the idea was like a man gets attacked by a sea monster.

And I'm like, "I don't understand. What's the rest of the idea?" And I said, "If in class one you had shared this with us, over the course of the six weeks we might have developed it into something. But why would you be holding onto it so secretly?" You have to be willing to let your ideas go and try them on. And let the feedback come in.

Sarah Enni:  That's so defeating because after eight weeks of being like, "What is this great idea?" Anything was gonna be disappointing. You're setting yourself up for failure.

Abdi Nazemian:  That's true too. But also if you don't put your work out there and show it to people, it's never really going to develop. It'll just be in your own little bubble.

Sarah Enni:  It's funny cause we talk a lot about like, "Sometimes that is fair. Sometimes keep your writing to yourself. Some stuff can be just for you. Know when you need that." But yeah, to grow, to become a better artist...

Abdi Nazemian:  You have to keep it to yourself for a little while, but not forever. And if you're gonna sign up for a writing workshop, then you be ready to share it.

Sarah Enni:  If you're ready to talk about other people's stuff, that's a part of the bargain. Let's talk a little bit about Walk-In Closet and Authentics and then we'll jump into Like A Love Story.

I'm really interested in the fact that... actually, before we talk too much in specifics, do you mind giving a pitch for The Walk-In Closet and The Authentics? And then we can talk about the themes.

Abdi Nazemian:   Yeah. So the Walk-In Closet was my first novel. It's an adult novel. It's narrated by a woman named Kara who is best friends with a gay Iranian, Bobby Ebadi, and Beverly Hills. And Bobby is basically out to everyone except for his parents. And so the title comes from this idea of the walk-in closet being she has walked into his closet, because he is in the closet to his family. But also that it's this very opulent world that she loves. And so really what it's about is this woman who has grown so close to this whole family. She loves this family. She's become a part of them. And yet she knows on some level that by doing this, she's enabling her best friend's lie. And it's about what happens when...

Sarah Enni: They pretend to be a couple.

Abdi Nazemian:    They pretend to be a couple. It's like a sin of omission where they never meant to pretend, but his parents assumed, and they've been friends since high school. So what do you do? And it's kind of what happens when that closet door comes bursting open. And so it's kind of a comedy of manners, in a way.

It has a little bit of satire, gentle satire, cause I love my community. But when I wrote it and when it came out, there really were so few. Actually, when the book came out, I was told that it was the first book with a gay Iranian - gay male Iranian - protagonist ever. I don't know if that's true, but if there's another one, I haven't been made aware of it.

So we weren't really out there. It was really my attempt at just bringing this story out there, but doing it in a way that had the humor and the fun that I think my community has, and not making it too serious.

Sarah Enni:  What do you call it? You had... 'Tehrangeles'?

Abdi Nazemian:   'Tehrangeles.' Yeah. Yeah. So the first two books, that and The Authentics, both take place in 'Tehrangeles', which really is what we call our community in LA. Because Los Angeles has the biggest community of Iranians outside of Iran. So it's 'Tehrangeles'.

Sarah Enni:   I love that.

Abdi Nazemian:  We're taking over.

Sarah Enni:   "We're taking over!" You had a quote that I thought was so fun. That Persians quote, "recreated a microcosm of 1970's Iran in their homes and communities." When you talk about comedy of etiquette, or it's like the British Victorian novels, right? Where it's all upstairs, downstairs, kind of within their home.

Abdi Nazemian:  It's very much so. And I always tell people... cause people say, "Oh, you were raised all around the world and you know, et cetera, et cetera. You're so worldly. Your experiences..." And that is true to a certain extent. But I always remind people, in our home, in our community, I was really raised in 1970's Iran. Those values, that world, those sounds, that music, all came with my parents and their friends.

My parents really stayed in that community. We weren't raised in America when we moved here, with American friends and American families coming over. We were very much still in an Iranian bubble. So that part of the book is very true. And still to this day, when I walk into Persian homes, I'm like, "Wow!" It feels like you're walking into both another place and time. Which has its pros and cons right?

Because so many of my American friends idealized my family and culture because it had so much richness and specificity and culture. It was also my way of celebrating by looking from the outside in. Because for me it was sometimes hard because I resented the culture for not accepting my... being.

Sarah Enni:  Well, it does strike me that your very first book attempt was a male point of view.

Abdi Nazemian:   Well, it was a female point of view technically, because it's from Kara's perspective.

Sarah Enni:   But the very, very first one.

Abdi Nazemian:  Oh, you're right, the very, very first... oh, you're right! The one that I put on a shelf and forgot about. Yes, you're right. That was a male point of view.

Sarah Enni:  And that's so interesting to me because then for The Walk -In Closet and The Authentics, were both...

Abdi Nazemian:   Female point of views.

Sarah Enni:  And you were very explicit about The Walk -In Closet, about wanting Kara to be an outsider and showing your culture through and outsider's perspective.

Abdi Nazemian:    Yeah. And I guess it's interesting because now looking back, it's hard to parse out how much was what I wanted, versus what I thought society wanted. I think probably as a result of my experiences in Hollywood where I was constantly told like, "You can't get this movie about Iranian people made."

Or maybe on some level I felt like I needed a point-of-entry character who was white, who was from the other culture. The culture that readers would understand. I don't know. I think as a writer I defer to the society around me. I can't lie and say every decision... our subconscious is so strong. Maybe that was my protective shield.

Sarah Enni:   That's what struck me about it. That moving into a new medium where you wanted to explore a lot of issues of identity. Your books are so, so heavily about exploring identity and exposing an inner self to the world, that you did that by adopting a whole other kind of persona.

Abdi Nazemian:  Yeah. God. This is therapy! I've thought about this a lot because I write so much from the female perspective both in film and in books. But I mean, the only thing I can think about is that when I was young, there really were no gay male narratives for me. So the male narratives were not things that I connected to.

The things that I connected to were female narratives. I connected to women in films. I connected to female writers. I liked Betty and Veronica, not Archie. You know what I mean? I liked female musicians. I still pretty much, I mean, if I had to give you my top 50 albums, they would probably all be by women. There might be a few Bowie's in there, but you know?

My points of identification with culture are still women to this day. There are many gay men who I identify with, but it's largely women. And so it's natural for me, when I think about character and story, to think through the female perspective. I recognize now that there's all these other reasons for it, and I probably haven't even unpacked them all.

But you're right. I think the fact that my books are almost all about identity in some form, and finding your identity, coming to terms with your identity, making peace with different strands of it, and the fact that I sometimes have adopted a female identity in order to do that probably says a lot about me!

Sarah Enni:   It's very interesting.

Abdi Nazemian:   All I can say is that it's often what feels natural.

Sarah Enni:    Especially like you're saying, so much storytelling that you've loved has been from that perspective, then it's like putting on your most comfortable pair of shoes to tell a story.

Abdi Nazemian:   Exactly. Exactly. And I think a lot of it does have to do with whatever inputs you have in childhood, because I think that's the most powerful thing. I think it's very hard for us to shake off those. Whatever you felt in your childhood is kind of ingrained inside you, right?

Sarah Enni:    We're all still in that mold a little bit.

Abdi Nazemian:   A little bit, yeah. And I think for me, so much of it was about identifying with women, with women's stories, with women's narratives. And so I think that will linger. Though now certainly it's very exciting for me that I get to once in a while - I don't want to stop telling women's stories because that's important to me - but the fact that I now get to write a book like, Like a Love Story.

It sounds very strange when you say like, Like a Love Story. But the fact that I get to write a book where although there is one, there's multiple narrators, and one is female, but two are male and gay. You know, that is really liberating to me too. So I appreciate that I live in a time where I can finally let loose in that way.

Sarah Enni:   Let's jump right to Like a Love Story so that we can kind of then talk about all the things around it. Let me just think about the order here. That's interesting that post-Authentics you had several concepts. I would love to hear how you came to Like a Love Story and what was it that made that be the story that got the green light?

Abdi Nazemian:  Right. So The Authentics was a great experience. It was published by Balzer and Bray. My editor was Alessandra Balzer. It was a wonderful creative experience. I felt very taken care of. And I knew that in an ideal world, I wanted to do another book with Alessandra, and she seemed open to it.

Because The Authentics was something that I wrote and finished before we submitted it, it was very much written for me. Even though it is, again, a female narrator. But it's a story about a girl who discovers a secret that makes her feel she doesn't fit into her Iranian culture. And it was very much, I think, a metaphor for me. Feeling both enamored of my culture but also outside of it for being queer.

And so it was very personal. But when I was pitching our books for the follow up book, I was treating it like a Hollywood pitch type thing where you're like, "Let me send you these five concepts." And I think because of that process, I wasn't digging deep into personal territory. I was kind of sending her like concepts of what you would send a producer concepts for like Rom-Coms. And I don't think that that's how she saw me as a writer.

And eventually we went to brunch, I was visiting New York, and we went to brunch and she just kind of - I don't remember the exact words - but she looked at me and she said, "I want you to write the book you want to write." Like, "What is the book you have always wanted to write that is personal to you?"

And this story, that turned into Like a Love Story though the specifics of it weren't there, is something I've wanted to write for a very long time. I had wanted to make it as a film for a while. I had thought about writing it in different forms. But I said to her, and I think I said it to her and prefaced it with, "You will never want this."

But I said, "The story I really want to write is a story about what it was like to grow up and realize you were gay at the time that I was growing up." Which is not the generation that was on the front lines of the AIDS crisis, and not the generation that was young enough to grow up when it was treatable. But the generation that were hitting their teenage years and coming into their sexuality when it was at its worst.

I was in this rare window of time. And I know everyone, not everyone, but many of my friends in my generation, we have very similar experiences. And it's not something that's been written about very often. And so I said to her, "I don't know what the story is yet. I just know that that experience was so unique. And to view what was happening with AIDS in this country through the lens of someone coming into their sexuality as a teenager would be amazing." And she said, "Go write it." I think she said, "Go write a chapter or two." I can't remember.

And I have a very weird writing process because it's hard for me with my job and kids to write. So oftentimes I'll go away and I'll binge write. And I went away and instead of a chapter, I think I wrote like 120 pages. It was all three voices, everything. It flowed.

I'm sure you know this feeling when you're not stretching to write. Where the characters are - I don't want to sound too - but I really do believe in the magic of writing. You really do feel like a vessel. You're like, "Oh, this is coming out of me." Like, "I'm not even doing anything". That's what it was like. These characters just came out of me. The note cards were there. I felt like in the course of two weeks I was like, "I think that there's something here"

I remember feeling like it was so personal that I was so scared. The first person I shared it with was my book agent and he was really supportive, but he's also a gay man. And so we were kind of like, "Is it us? Or are we so personally attached to this time and this theme? What is Alessandra gonna think?"

And so then when she liked it, I felt over the moon. And then we set about finishing and editing and all of that. But that was really the process. It was really being encouraged to tell the story I genuinely wanted to tell and not the one I felt like she wanted.

Sarah Enni:  Or was expected of you.

Abdi Nazemian:  Or the publisher wanted or was expected of me.

Sarah Enni:  Which is a powerful thing too. I'm all about framing and context. That's a huge part of my life. So, just the shift in perspective; rather than being outside in, going from the inside out.

Abdi Nazemian:    Yeah. I think it was John Cameron Mitchell who said, and I may be wrong about this, but who said like, "If you put all of your obsessions into your work, it can't be bad." And I got to this point, and my book agent really was supportive. Because as I was writing this, and the first draft was even a little more strident, and it was like all of this passion was coming out of me.

And some of it was anger, but some of it was also just for all of these things that I've been obsessed with my whole life. Some of it is like the activism. I think because of the generation I come from, I looked up to the previous generation. To the activists who kind of saved all of our lives, you know?

But also people like Madonna, like Judy Garland, these people who I felt saved me in other ways as a kid. And I was just writing, and writing, and writing about them and I really had to pull back on some of that. But it just felt really liberating. And I felt like once I was writing it, I have so much love for the things I'm exploring in this book, they mean so much to me, that I hope it comes through. It can't not come through, right?

When you feel that deeply. When you are literally crying. I'm not kidding. I'm not somebody who cries that much, you know? But I cried through writing so much of this. I would be in tears at a coffee shop and I was like, "Something is happening here that doesn't happen with every book." You know?

Sarah Enni:   I do that too where I'm like, "Oh, I'm just weeping a little bit at this coffee shop." Like, "No one needs to know." I think you can't ask someone to cry unless you cry when you're making it, to be honest. I don't think there's a way to convey it without the weird ephemeral thing that happens when you're so in that zone then you're creating that special stuff.

Abdi Nazemian:    And it feels so [pauses] it just feels so much better because you feel like you're taking something that is from so deep inside you. You're not like the whole outside in, versus inside out. It's like you're giving people something that's really, really from deep within you.

Sarah Enni:     And something very specific. I keep coming back to this, that the specific is the universal.

Abdi Nazemian:   Yes, always.

Sarah Enni:  The more that you can really put in that level of granular, weird little details, people just respond to that. People can see the authenticity of that. Before we get much farther with Like a Love Story, you have already to some extent, but just the official pitch for the book.

Abdi Nazemian:  For Like a Love Story?

Sarah Enni:  Yes.

Abdi Nazemian:  So Like a Love Story is a very difficult book to pitch But it's a book about three teenagers, Reza, Judy, and Art, who fall in and out of love with each other - both love and friendship - in over one school year in 1989 and 1990. And they also get involved in Act Up, which was an AIDS activist group, in or around the country, but in New York for them in the late eighties, early nineties. And so it's really about how the three of them find themselves, find love, and come into their identities.

Sarah Enni:  Come into their own. It's really, really beautiful. I have had such a good time reading it. So I have a lot of questions. I'm gonna ask the most important ones. But especially given what we just talked about, I was struck that this story has three narrators. So there is one female narrator, but there's two male narrators. And knowing a little bit more about your history, it seems like both Art and Reza have so much of you to them.

Reza, though I think he has a lot of your same biography as far as where he lived when he lived, but I think he's a little bit later to come to the states. Is that right?

Abdi Nazemian:   He is later to come to the states and also would now be a little older than me. So the characters don't line up exactly with my age. I changed it by a few years for a variety of reasons, partially because I was really deep in research on Act Up and a lot of the actions that I wanted to focus on were during this era.

I also felt like the era, once it became very clear to me that the two biggest cultural historic things I would be drawing on were Act Up and Madonna, the era of Madonna's career where I really felt like something shifted both in terms of her representation of sexuality. But for me was this same era, was 1990. And so as I was kind of looking at, "Oh wow." These Act Up protests that I remember so clearly, and like the Blonde Ambition Tour and the Vogue video and all of that was in the same year.

And it became very clear to me that that was when the story had to be. But yeah, Reza superficially does have a lot in common with me, though his story is not mine. I mean, he had a dad who was an alcoholic who passed away. A mom who remarried. A sister. I have none of those things.

So as always, fiction veers away from the truth. He does have a lot of my superficial qualities. He's Iranian. He's obsessed with Madonna. He's kind of reticent to come into his sexuality and it takes him a little while. But at the same time, Art also is somebody who has a lot of anger, a lot of passion, a lot of activist spirit. And although I don't think I externalize a lot of that the way Art does. I do feel like when I look back at my life, I do have a lot of that energy as well.

Sarah Enni:   I read interviews where you, because Reza is quiet, and quietly trying to come to grips with...

Abdi Nazemian:  I am not quiet!

Sarah Enni:   And yet you had an interview where you said that you were a very outspoken teen, which struck me as more of Art. Art is really living-out-loud and the kind of person that I think figures out who he is by projecting and letting things bounce off and seeing what comes back. Is how that kind of struck me.

And there's a lot of difference in class that's discussed. And these kids all live in Manhattan?

Abdi Nazemian:  They all live in Manhattan and they go to a private school. I love when class is explored, especially in young adult literature. Because I think class is so important to young adult lives. Into the way that we explore identities. And oftentimes people are reticent, I think, to really talk about it.

Sarah Enni:   Americans don't want to talk about it.

Abdi Nazemian:   They don't want to talk about class or money. Yeah, it's true. Each of these teens really comes from a different class. Because Art comes from the upper-upper class. His dad's in banking, they have a lot of money.

Sarah Enni:  Art has a very long name.

Abdi Nazemian:  Oh yeah, Bartholomew Emerson Grant. So Art comes from that class, but rebels against it because his parents are homophobic. Judy really comes from the middle class I would say. I mean, they're able to afford an apartment in Manhattan, but they're really struggling to send her to this school. They're sacrificing a lot.

And Reza came from a family that was, again, middle class maybe, because he lost his father. His mother was struggling, but she is now remarried to a wealthy Iranian. So he's coming at class from an interesting perspective where he wasn't from that class. And suddenly he is. And what does that look like? And what does that mean and do for him and his relationships?

I hope the book kind of provides a deep emotional analysis of what it's like to be in those three different strata. Cause I think when you're young it matters so much.

Sarah Enni:  And I would say that towards the very end of the book, which is where I am now, I haven't gotten to the final page yet, but there is so much. I loved how they fought. Like even the conversations that they're having where they're breaking it down.

All three characters are very aware, they're all hitting each other's buttons in the ways that they know they can. In ways that feel very real but are also, I think, important for teens to read. These are the different perspectives from this fight. Whatever happened, happened. And now here are all the different ways that that's falling out.

And I thought it was really well done based on all those different things. They're all gonna have different perspectives on how this fell apart.

Abdi Nazemian:  That's the most exciting thing about writing three perspectives in a book. is you get to do that. You get to switch back and forth and see it from someone else's angle. Really, the thing that I love about it, is they all have valid perspectives and it's about exploring the humanity of each of them. All three characters say and do things in this book that are hurtful, but hopefully from a place of compassion and love in the end because once you get into their heads, you understand why they're doing that.

Sarah Enni:  Totally. Totally. Which is so perfect. I want to ask about Madonna and Act Up.

Abdi Nazemian:  Ask away!

Sarah Enni:  I love that those kind of determine the timeline of the whole book. But first, let's start with Madonna and then move to the activism. You had a Madonna room?

Abdi Nazemian:  I had a Madonna room. So I got obsessed with Madonna when I was seven, which is when her first video came out, which is actually crazy because it's the age my kids are now. So it really puts it all into perspective.

Sarah Enni:  Oh man. The Pokemon.

Abdi Nazemian:  Well they're obsessed with Pokemon. It's true. But they are also obsessed with Madonna. I will tell you, cause we're getting married in October, we asked them to make a wedding playlist because they wanted to help and it is like 50% Madonna.

Sarah Enni:  That's amazing. You're doing it right!

Abdi Nazemian:    Yeah. And they're obscure songs. It's not just the hits.

Sarah Enni:   Deep cuts!

Abdi Nazemian:  Deep cuts. I mean, White Heat. And I mean... we're going deep. But when I was seven, the Lucky Star video came out. I was in Canada at the time and it was like this instant identification I had with her, which I can't describe.

Sarah Enni:  And which Reza also feels.

Abdi Nazemian:  Which Reza also feels. In Reza's case he somehow hasn't discovered her until the Like a Prayer album! Coming to her so late. But I love that it's Art who introduces Reza to Madonna because so much of the book is about the passing down of gay culture and gay touchstones, which I think is so important. But yeah, Reza immediately, the minute he hears her, he feels like, “This is my person!”

And that's how I felt. And I made my parents take me to The Virgin Tour. I mean, I begged! I was eight years old when she came to Toronto for The Virgin Tour. The Beastie Boys opened for her. My parents were horrified.

Sarah Enni:  Oh my god, what a great show!

Abdi Nazemian:   It was amazing. I mean, I still can't believe I went to The Virgin Tour. So the thing is that Madonna just became… when she first started her career, nobody knew that she represented gay life in any way. She was just a pop singer the same way Olivia Newton John was a pop singer in the 80s.

But as it became very clear that Madonna was something bigger, and a bigger cultural force, she remains my obsession. And then when she started to introduce gay themes very explicitly into her work, it became undeniable in our home. And I think to contextualize it for people, in an Iranian home, there is no gay life.

We don't talk about it. We don't have gay friends. My parents didn't have gay friends. We didn't watch things that included gay content. It wasn't a part of life that we were exposed to. But they knew that Madonna was my obsession. And so it was this way of introducing the subject matter into the home. Which I give her a tremendous amount of credit for, because I know that my family wasn't the only one.

Madonna was talking about queer life. And not just talking about it, but putting it explicitly into her work at a time when nobody else in the mainstream was doing it. And some people fault her for that. I personally think it was very heroic and I think that many kids like me would never have seen themselves for much, much longer if she hadn't done that.

So, over the years I've remained very loyal, as most of us are to our queens. But for me, Madonna, her relevance... I think her music is amazing. I think her mastery of the pop craft is unparalleled and all of that. But when all is said and done, the thing that I find most important about her is that she was, and still is, willing to take stands and say things for people who are unrepresented. For people who are unpopular.

She's willing to provoke. And for many of the readers of this book who are young adults, won't know in the 80s it was not the thing for pop stars to stand up for Queer people. I mean now every pop star does. It's almost like a rite of passage. But Madonna really was a trailblazer in that way. And I think the impact of that art on people's lives, on young lives, was huge.

Sarah Enni:  Yeah, and this leads perfectly to talking about Act Up. Because the other thing that was so striking to me reading this book, and it is one of the ways that maybe movies do this too, but books just put you right in that place. And it's what you're talking about, 1989, 1990 is truly not that long ago. This is the recent past. But it's such a crazy thing.

Abdi Nazemian: Thank you for saying that!

Sarah Enni:  Yeah! But it is wild to look back and remember we're in a time that's echoing that time so much. I think that's part of why this is really standing out, because I was like, "Yeah, this was a time when the President was openly hated by a lot of the country, and he wasn't interested in representing a lot of the country. Certainly not interested in representing queer issues or saying AIDS out loud.”

And a moment where there was so much anger. And the activism that was done then, sowed the seeds for what we're seeing now. It's explicitly being borrowed by the activists that we're seeing now. So to have this book come out and be a reminder… we've been here before.

But also remember what it was like in the very recent past to be gay in this country, and how scary it was and how unknown. And how there was not the kind of community that exists now ,that's so much more mainstream. It was very powerful to have this book put me back there. Or at least to imagine it, you know? Cause that wasn't my experience,.

Abdi Nazemian:   I'm taking in what you're saying because it's making me all emotional. It's hard because it's so unfortunate that we are now in a time that's echoing this. I mean just today, and I hope this isn't the case, but it's supposedly our fucking President - you told me I can swear!

Sarah Enni:  Yup!

Abdi Nazemian:  So, he’s supposed to meet with one of those kids who harassed the Native American. And I just think about how we now have a President who is just demeaning so many people's dignity. Again, I know how hard that is.

It's much easier now because I'm older, and I have a stronger spine. And so when President Trump wants to ban people to come from my country, yes, I take it personally. But I don't take it personally the way a 13 year old does.

Because eventually you develop a sense of self that's stronger. And the same thing with being queer. The things that I heard about being queer when I was 13, coming from both government, media, culture, community members, whatever, they stuck with me. You don't forget a single instance. I don't forget a single instance of homophobia or bullying or whatever. You remember them all.

It's like they are ingrained inside you. And I think about what the President's saying and how it must land on young people who are of color, who are native, who are immigrants, you name it.

So I guess for me, one thing that was really important in writing the book, I very early on felt like I had this thematic thesis, which was that I wanted to write about history and how important it was and how history had to be passed down.

And that meant both what we think of as history, which is politics and government. But also what I view as history, which is the arts and iconography and music and all of that. But what really stuck with me was this idea of when we talk about learning about history, we always talk about avoiding the worst.

And I wanted to come at this book from a place of, what if we learn history, to repeat the best. What I wanted to do with exploring Act Up, and I'm very open with the fact that I was never in Act Up. I was a kid when all this happened. But to me they were some of the biggest heroes of my life and that I looked up to.

And I think about, why aren't we studying them in classrooms? As you said. And you're right, many modern activist movements are kind of borrowing their structure from Act Up.

Sarah Enni:  Totally cribbing from it.

Abdi Nazemian:   And Act Up was revolutionary in the way it structured itself. And I think like, "Well, what if we learn history not to avoid the bad, but to repeat the good?" What if we do it because in this time that was so horrible, when literally both man and nature were attacking these people. You think about, my God, a disease is attacking people and at the same time, human beings are attacking them, you know?

Not doing anything to help. Not putting money into life-saving medications. Not making those medications available. Not supporting them. Families not coming to their bedsides. I mean everything. And you think, "Well, wow, this community still found a way to come together and take care of each other, and demand better treatment."

And so now we look at our time today, when so many different groups are being attacked. Once again, both by circumstances and by governments and people. And what can we learn from this time from Act Up? From the way the queer community persevered? I don't know, it just filled me. When I had that thought, I remember having that thought and being like, "I don't know how I put that into a story, but I know that that's a concept that I need to explore."

Sarah Enni:   I love that. I think that's such a cool way to think about history and such an important thing to say. I learned so much more about history by hearing the stories, rather than watching the whole Ken Burns documentary, you kind of focus on one thing. You know? So things like that all add up over time. And I think the reflection and looking back. There's already been a lot of that with talking about what was it like when Nixon X, Y, Z or the Clinton time? We're doing a lot of soul searching of the recent past, which is so interesting.

Abdi Nazemian:  We are, and I think that that's great. I think about both the OJ documentary, and the mini-series that were made. Because the OJ trial was something that happened in both of our lifetime, I assume? I don't want to assume your age!

Sarah Enni:  Oh yeah, for sure.

Abdi Nazemian:   But to look back on it from the perspective of today is incredible. And I think we oftentimes need a remove of time to really look back and say, "Wow, we were dealing with a lot of our demons with that case ,or that thing, that fascinated us."

Sarah Enni: And it gives us [pauses] I'm not sure what the right word is, but it gives us some kind of framework to put on what we're experiencing now. It's so hard to separate yourself from what you're feeling now. But you talking about Madonna having the unique privilege of someone who is able to affect public conversation. Which is something that I don't think can be overstated. Saying we need to have a public conversation sounds so trite, but it's true. When everybody's talking about something it's a unique moment.

Abdi Nazemian: See, I think this is one of those things I'm so excited to talk about, hopefully, when this book comes out. Because I think there are different perspectives. And I'm one of those people, hopefully people will know this because I wrote from three different perspectives, but I'm open to different perspectives and they can all be right. Right?

In my kids' school, they have this thing, cool tools, where they teach them about different concepts through objects. And one of them is a kaleidoscope. And they use it to teach them that two people can see the same thing and both be right.

For example, Madonna. Because she's such a cultural provocateur, and people have a lot of opinions about her. But I have read through the context of more modern thinking, analyses of her work. Especially her work around queer life, that calls her a cultural appropriator of queer life. That she used the queer community. All of which I think are perspectives that are, if explored correctly, really interesting.

But I also want to add a narrative to that time period that tells people, "Hey, if it weren't for this person, kids like Reza may never have seen themselves." Which was very much my own experience. And let's talk about that balance. Where do we find a place where we can hold both of those opinions? And look at history and say, "Well, I don't know. I don't know where different people stand."

I know my own experience. But I do think sometimes, unless you tell it in story form, people won't feel the feelings of it. They'll just view it as a ‘think point’ or an argument. But I wanted to make sure it was emotional. To show people this person's work, this person's art affected this kid. Made him feel more heard, more able to be himself. And I know, with Madonna particularly, even with lesser stars who didn't shine quite as bright, but I know the power of those people to make young people feel seen, heard, confident.

And I mean my God, with Madonna, talk to any gay man of my generation, it's like the majority of them will say the same thing. She really helped us.

Sarah Enni:  Just a way to break through noise. Right? She was putting something in your face and she wasn't afraid to have different takes on it. Basically, what I was thinking about this book, is putting a framework on our moment now, and thinking about the activists. Or someone like Alexandria Ocacio-Cortez, right? She has this unique ability. She says one thing and then that's what we're all talking about for 24 hours.

Abdi Nazemian:  She's amazing.

Sarah Enni:  So unusual. She’s so powerful. And she's using it in a smart way.

Abdi Nazemian:  Look, I'm a gay person who is brown. I moved to this country and had a lot of trouble both because of my ethnicity and because of my sexuality. So it was this double whammy of within my own community I was ostracized for being gay, within the gay community there were very little representations of people of color.

One of the reasons 1989 and 1990 are so important to me, when the Madonna cycle is, because it was when she was on her Blonde Ambition Tour. And that was the Vogue era, the Truth or Dare era for people who want more context.

But the thing that was most important to me about that era is all of her backup dancers, who she basically made celebrities, were very clearly gay because they were effeminate, you know? And although I still didn't know they were all gay in the beginning, which is a whole other story, and most of them were either black or brown.

And for a young kid like me, I had no access to imagery of gay people of color before that. And so the revolutionary aspect of that, it's not like she was just taking the culture and making it her own. She was also giving the culture this platform where you could actually see those men with your own eyes.

My parents took me to that tour, they saw that sitting next to me, you know? I mean the power of it. The Vogue video, that video took over the world and she's sharing the screen time with...

Sarah Enni:  The guy from Paris Is Burning. Who's name I can't remember right now.

Abdi Nazemian:  Yeah, exactly. So for me personally, a huge power to that. The conversation now has changed. We're in a different era where there's different points of access for people to get their stories out there. But in 1989 that was just so powerful for me personally.

And it also served as like a portal into other things. I think that's another thing I loved about Madonna. She really led her fans toward... I probably wouldn't have seen Paris Is Burning. She loved Pedro Almodovar and included him in Truth or Dare. And then I watched all his films, which were very queer (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and Talk to Her).

Sarah Enni:  She's sort of by being so open about her influences, then made her aesthetics something that you could all learn from.

Abdi Nazemian:    Exactly. And that's where I think the book very much is about activism. How do you create change? How do you influence the world? And I know that in my life, art has been activism. I don't even think of her as a singer really. I think of her as an activist almost. Or, she usually calls herself a performance artist. But I don't think about her as just a singer. She's so much more.

And one of the things I want to do in the book is explore the different forms that people can use to create change, because we're all different. And I know there was this recent time where somebody on Twitter - god Twitter can be so good and so bad - but this person on Twitter kind of attacked me for not doing anything for gays in Iran.

I was like, "I haven't been into Iran since I was two years old. I don't know anything about the situation on the ground there. It's horrific what's happening. But I'm also one of the only people in our community who speaks about these issues. I've written now three books about these characters. I go speak to the community here and I speak to support groups." If this isn't enough, if the thing I can offer which is being a writer and living my life openly and being a presence, isn't enough? Then I don't know what you want me to do because I can't be that.

It's very clear in the book that Reza is never going to be the activist Art is gonna be, that's not in his DNA. But maybe he'll find another way. You know? And similarly, some people are meant to be artists, some people are meant to be activist, some people are meant to raise...

I mean, one of my favorite characters is Judy's mom, who at some point says something about how raising her is enough. And that's her good thing, you know? But the question for me is how do we all find our way to impact the world? That could be raising your children. That could be making art, that could be activism. I have no judgments over people's ways, but I do think it's important to think about, “What is my lasting influence?”

Sarah Enni:  Yeah, I love that [sighs]. So good. Okay. We have to wrap up. The last thing I'm gonna do is a quick thing about Drag Race and then we're gonna do advice, just cause I teed up Drag Race earlier. But this book also made me think about Drag Race because… I'm always thinking about Drag Race!

But Rupaul's Drag Race is one of the places where you see generations of gay men in the same room having these experiences, and some trans women. And this effortless intersectionality and sharing of stories. And the young "Look Queens" who are Instagram famous versus the people who have been dancing for 30 years and owning the stage. Them sharing their stories was the first moment where I was like, "This change has happened so fast." These queens are putting on makeup next to each other and their experiences getting to this point could not have been more different. And it's such a cool... that that conversation is on TV. It's on VH-1.

Abdi Nazemian:   I'm obsessed. I've seen every episode of Drag Race and All Stars. You know what's interesting about Rupaul's Drag Race? I don't know if this is still the case, but at one point I had heard - and I've worked with many people involved in that show - but at one point I'd heard that Ru gives all the queens - before a season starts - certain films that are certain touch points.

And one of them I believe is Mommy Dearest. One of them is Paris Is Burning, which a lot of the language of Rupaul's Drag Race comes from. And what were some of the other ones? I think Mahogany might've been one of them? Which is so good.

But I thought, you know what's so great is because drag, a lot of references and language are coming from these other places. And I think it is important for young drag queens to know where some of those lines are coming from. It's like if there's going to be something that they all repeat… and then we all repeat because we hear it there, that we know where it comes from.

Sarah Enni: What's the origin.

Abdi Nazemian:  So I always thought that was really cool. But I agree with you. Rupaul's Drag Race is intergenerational. It always is incredible about representation. Now we have a trans contestant, although actually it's a second trans contestants right?

Sarah Enni:    And several have come out as trans after.

Abdi Nazemian:    Since the show, yeah.

Sarah Enni:  After winning the show.

Abdi Nazemian:   So I think it is revolutionary. I love that show. It is one of my favorite shows.

Sarah Enni:  It's so good. And a friend of mine just watched it with me for the first time the other night, with that episode, which was so good. And she was like, "I haven't had this much fun watching a TV show in years!" I was like, "Yes!"

Abdi Nazemian:   The amazing thing to me that makes me feel so good about the world, is how many straight people I know who watch it. I'm like, "Who are all these straight people? Where have all of you amazing, amazing drag loving...?” I guess straight people always would have been open if queer culture had been available to them. That's the thing that I keep thinking is like, "It wasn't available for the most part." So why would we expect anyone to engage with it?

Sarah Enni:  Right. And that's part of what makes it so cool though, is that it was underground. It was like Punk Rock in a way.

Abdi Nazemian:  Yes, of course. That's another thing. I mean, we could have a whole thing about that issue, which is what happens when something underground becomes co-opted? Because as somebody who did come from a culture that was very much underground, I mean gay culture was far more underground. And there is a part of me that loved that, and still loves it. Because it feels like it's yours and yours only.

And the democratization of that, while I think it is amazing cause drag culture is so powerful and I think is doing so much good, it does for the people who were part of that niche feel like something was taken away. So that's something to talk about.

Sarah Enni:   It needs to be respected, right.

Abdi Nazemian:   It does! Yes. Yes. I know. I mean god...that issue, well we would never get to the bottom of it though, because it's so complex and it's so personal, right?

Sarah Enni:  That'll be our drag con issue.

Abdi Nazemian:  But you know, for all of the Rupaul's Drag Race queens, there’s still drag that's underground. There's still drag and drag performance art and stuff that would probably not find its way to Drag Race cause it's not as TV friendly. So there is a lot out there that is still... if people want to explore. Don't think the underground has disappeared. Counter-culture is alive.

Sarah Enni:   Yes, yes, it's true. And we're creating a whole new generation of counter cultures right now with our current situation. People are turning back to the arts to say something. Which is good. So thank you for giving me so much time. But we do wrap up with advice. So I would just love to hear, especially as someone who has had a career in storytelling in many mediums, I'd love to hear what advice you have for people who are trying to write books.

Abdi Nazemian:   Oh Wow. That is very broad. Um, my first piece of advice would be, as we've discussed, don't be afraid to fail. Don't be afraid to write a lot of stuff that may just be a stepping stone to the thing that you will ultimately publish, or get made as a film or TV show.

Write from the heart. If you feel it - recapping some of what we discussed - if you're crying, chances that someone else will cry are higher. If you're laughing, chances that someone else will laugh are higher. Write from your place of love, not for anybody else.

And the other thing that comes up a lot when I talk to writers is self-editing too early. I really believe, and maybe people are in different camps about this, but I really believe in banging out work and then looking at it later. Because I do think part of your brain that is the editor, is your enemy when you're in the early stages of writing. So don't stop. Even if you're ten pages in and you know that something on page two has to change, just change it when you're done with a draft. Note it, move on.

Sarah Enni:  That's a really good point.

Abdi Nazemian:  I am on my fourth time of doing The Artist's Way at the moment, which for those who don't know is a 12 week course of creative recovery. And I swear by it. It's the greatest thing ever and it's really time consuming but amazing.

Sarah Enni:   Creative recovery?

Abdi Nazemian:  The idea is that we're all creatively blocked. And so this woman, Julia Cameron, created this 12 week program, which I'm sure was inspired by the 12 steps, cause of the whole 12 of it all. There's probably some connection. But the idea is you are doing all these exercises over the course of the 12 weeks that help to unblock you. The thesis being you're probably blocked. I think even after 20 years of writing, I'm still blocked half the time.

So, the core of it is writing three pages in a journal every morning. The Morning Pages. And then taking yourself on an artist's date every week, which is a fun thing you do alone. But I really do tell everybody about that book and it's just this magical thing.

Sarah Enni:   Yeah, I like that. It's slowing you down.

Abdi Nazemian:    It slows you down. It forces you into a routine. A lot of it is about getting you in touch. I think the pages are about releasing the shit out of you. All the anxiety, all the doubts, all the thoughts. And then the artist's date is really about reconnecting with that part of you that's like a child. Because really it is like you're writing from that place, right? You're writing from that place of childhood wonder and curiosity.

Sarah Enni:  Joy.

Abdi Nazemian:   Joy. All those things that as adults we kind of just have beat out of us by routine, and bills, and doubts, and fears.

Sarah Enni:   There was this, not to harp on too long, but I binge watched all of Marie Kondo last week.

Abdi Nazemian:   [Gasp] I haven't done it yet!

Sarah Enni:   Oh Man. I had a hangover and it was great for that. But it struck me over and over and over again. Her process is predicated on making people become more sensitive to their sense of joy. And she was like, "You need to start with this and move on because then you're honing your ability to sense joy." And I was like, "What?" This sweet, tiny Japanese woman is just talking about how we have deadened ourselves to being sensitive to a spark of happiness.

And you know, questionable depth there, but I was watching it just like, "Hell yeah! I guess I don't stop and think about whether everything that's in my home makes me happy all the time." And I like that show because they were like, "57 days later." They were like, "This was a process that took many months."

Abdi Nazemian:   But what I love about that, and I haven't seen the Marie Kondo thing yet but I want to, and I know everyone's talking about it. But what is similar about that and The Artist's Way, is that a lot of people think joy, or creativity, or things just have to come naturally. There are these magical things that are just going to happen.

And like I said with Like a Love Story, it feels like magic when it happens. But the truth is you've got to do a lot of groundwork to get there. So with Marie Kondo, it's that decluttering. With The Artist's Way it's about, really the pages are de-cluttering your brain. It's about doing things that will reconnect you with that childhood sense of joy.

But you have to do that groundwork that sets you up for the moments of magic. Otherwise, they're not gonna come. So a lot of the work that you're doing, I think as a creative person, is not on the page itself. It's the work you're doing to create a life that allows your creativity to come through.

Sarah Enni:  Yeah. I love that. Well, I think that's a beautiful note to end on. Abdi thank you so much for giving me so much of your time today.

Abdi Nazemian:   Thank you it was so much fun.

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Sarah Enni:  Thank you so much to Abdi. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @AbDaddy, and follow me on both @Sarahenni (Twitter and Instagram), and the show @firstdraftpod (Twitter and Instagram).

Hayley Hershman produced this episode.

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