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A revolution uproots a family. A kid grows up between languages and continents. Years later, a studio note says, “cut all the gay characters,” and a writer decides he’s done waiting for permission. Our talk with Abdi Nazemian is a global tour—from Tehran to Paris, Toronto, New York, and LA—and how storytelling can hold all those lives in one place.

Abdi talks about how reading scripts in Hollywood taught him structure, even as the system kept pushing his stories out. Self-publishing The Walk-In Closet changed that, giving him a way to tell stories no one else would greenlight. We get into how YA fiction became a space for honesty and detail—like Like a Love Story, which captures AIDS-era New York with both the rage of ACT UP and the hope of the dance floor. The Chandler Legacies looks at the damage and the power of institutions, asking if the same places that hurt us can also help us grow. Only This Beautiful Moment zooms out to three generations of an Iranian family, showing how queerness, exile, denial, and love all mix together when you stop looking for easy villains.

Then there’s Desert Echoes, where young love runs into grief and addiction in the California desert. Music runs through it all—Madonna, Kate Bush, Tori Amos, Lana Del Rey—not as background noise but as a shared language that connects people who feel alone. Abdi reminds us that nuance matters more than purity, that messy conversations with family are worth having, and that history—like the 1953 coup in Iran—still shapes the choices we make now.

In the end, his message is simple but powerful: joy and sorrow always coexist, and stories help us hold both.

If this moves you, share it with a friend, follow the show, and leave a review. The more we talk about complex stories, the more space we make for them.

Follow, subscribe and learn more about Stories Without Borders on:

Instagram: @Stories_WithoutBorders

YouTube: @Stories_WithoutBorders

Website: StoriesWithoutBorders.org

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Chapters

1. Guest Reveal And New Book (00:00:00)

2. Abdi’s Global Childhood And Identity (00:00:20)

3. Finding Creativity In Displacement (00:03:22)

4. Hollywood Gatekeeping And Self-Publishing (00:05:02)

5. Discovering YA And Cultural Specificity (00:08:44)

6. Writing Like A Love Story (00:12:29)

7. Joy And Grief In The AIDS Era (00:19:00)

8. Boarding School Trauma And Nuance (00:23:25)

9. Family, Queerness, And Generational Context (00:28:20)

10. Researching Iran And Hidden Histories (00:34:10)

11. Desert Echoes, Love, And Loss (00:39:44)

12. Music As Muse: Madonna To Lana (00:45:30)

13. Embracing Nuance Over Division (00:50:10)

14. Lightning Round And Levity (00:53:10)

3 episodes