In this episode, co-host team members Mattie Bynum and Shane Lukas talk with The New York Times-lauded author Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore about the “urgency” of queer storytelling and the importance of refusing the terms of dominant culture. Mattilda describes their process of meshing fiction with historical reality to capture the “spectacular intimacy” of queer life in the 1980s and 90s.They share how their early experiences with sex work and the AIDS crisis shaped their commitment to “experimental” writing and vulnerability plus shares insights into their most recent critically-celebrated book ‘Terry Dactyl’.