Deception Lies at the Heart of This Queer Author's Debut

contains a falsehood — from minor lies that roll off the tongue to elaborate deceits like hiring a stranger to play a fictional friend — that test the limits of how far we are willing to go to conjure the person we wish we were or could be.

Deception, lies, and mistrust are the narrative thread throughout your collection of stories. What made you hone in on this theme? Some of these falsehoods are minor, seemingly harmless, like lying about a skill you don't have, and some are elaborate: one of your characters hires an actor to portray a friend he invented. How does the magnitude of a lie inform who your characters actually are?

Queer people face so many challenges and the world is just not fair to them, to us. In a way, the roles to play to be accepted as a gay man, for example, are quite clear. And we can be rewarded for good performances. It takes a lot to reject those flattened roles and build out from a place of clarity and strength, in community. That doesn't mandate doing the opposite of these roles or place weighty value judgments on any characteristics.

I think it's really common and not inherently a bad thing at all. I think there's this contradiction you rightly note here — the nearly total freedom of persona. There is real freedom there, and I love that too; I do! In fact, persona can be helpful in finding who we are, what we value. I'm thinking here of how drag specifically can function to this end.

"How to Live Your Best Life" and"Rorschach" are profoundly unsettling, and I mean that as a compliment. What made you drift into the dystopian setting?

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