Arvin Ahmadi grew up outside Washington DC, graduated from Columbia University, and worked in the tech industry prior to becoming a full-time writer. He now lives in New York City and has published three books. He’s joining us today to talk about his latest novel, How It All Blew Up. 

Interview starts at 18 minutes. Note: right near the end Arvin's Airpods died so he drops out and jumps back in again. 

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In this interview, we chat about:

• The real-life inspiration for How It All Blew Up
• Why Arvin prefers the comfort blanket of writing fiction (and how fiction helped him get his shit figured out)
• The dilemma of wanting to explore painful issues but feeling as if you’re “pimping your pain” in doing so
• The importance of self-care while writing
• The process of writing and publishing How It All Blew Up (which was meant to be a totally different story)
• The real-life characters and what they think of the novel
• How Arvin feels about the feedback he’s had on the book so far and what people are celebrating most
• Pop culture as a shortcut to who we are
• Why we need more queer Muslim stories
• Arvin’s experience as a Wikipedia editor

Books and other things mentioned:

• Call Me By Your Name
• Master of None Season 2
• The Henna Wars by Adiba Jaigirdar

Follow Arvin on Instagram @arvinahmadi

Follow us on Instagram @betterwordspod

We both received a copy of How It All Blew Up from Allen & Unwin.