Building Bridges Through and With Creativity

Randy Rambo Classroom Library Grant Luncheon Featured Speaker

Abdi Nazemian is the author of Like a Love Story—a Stonewall Honor Book, Only This Beautiful Moment, The Chandler Legacies, and The Authentics. His novel The Walk-In Closet won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Debut Fiction. His newest novel, released in September 2024, is Desert Echoes, and is available for purchase in the exhibition hall.

Abdi Nazemian’s screenwriting credits include the films The Artist's Wife, The Quiet, and Menendez: Blood Brothers and the television series Ordinary Joe and The Village. He has been an executive producer and associate producer on numerous films, including Call Me By Your Name, Little Woods, and The House of Tomorrow.

He lives in Los Angeles with his husband, their two children, and their dog, Disco.

In this discussion, Abdi Nazemian will share his journey coming of age as a queer Iranian-American who found refuge in stories and also felt invisible in those same stories. In tracing his life experiences, Nazemian will discuss the challenges he’s faced and lessons he’s learned through his writing career in film and television, and as an author of young adult books that tell all the stories he wishes he had in his own young adult years.