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 an illustration of 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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