Over and Over Again: Illustrator Aubrey Hirsch on the Power of Storytelling

“Getting people to feel angry with me makes me feel less alone, less helpless. (It) makes me feel like, okay, there’s a whole team of us. We're all gonna do it.” - Writer and illustrator, Aubrey Hirsch

The world is such a hot mess: every day a new disaster, a new human rights catastrophe. It can just feel… endless. Illustrator Aubrey Hirsch joins us to talk about outrage and trauma and community building - it’s like the greatest hits of modern culture. But mostly, she joins us to talk about art - specifically, the ways that storytelling helps us band together and work towards the world we all want.

PS: Listen all the way through so you don’t miss Aubrey’s slightly sinister but ultimately functional ideas on hope.

In this episode we cover:

• The relationship between rage and creation: when there’s so much wrong with the world all you can do is scream
• Why taking action to change things matters - even if your actions won’t save everyone
• Women and anger: hoo boy, it’s a whole thing.
• Why healing inside trauma is actually kind of… boring.
• Connecting through the power of storytelling

Notable quotes:

“I feel very helpless and I don't wanna feel like that because I know that to be f*cked is a spectrum and we can be more f*cked than we are now or less f*cked. It's not a binary. I want us to move in the right direction (less f*cked), and I want to be a part of that movement - even if my action comes too late for some.” - Aubrey Hirsch

About our guest:

Aubrey Hirsch is the author of Why We Never Talk About Sugar, a collection of short stories, and This Will Be His Legacy, a flash fiction chapbook. Her stories, essays and comics have appeared widely in print and online in places like American Short Fiction, Vox, TIME, The New York Times, The Rumpus, The Toast, and in the New York Times bestselling anthology, Not That Bad. Her essay on trauma and surviving gun violence is a must read. Find it here.

Additional resources

Aubrey occasionally teaches comics for “non-artists.” Check her TW @aubreyhirsch for announcements. She publishes new comics and essays on Roxane Gay’s substack, The Audacity.

Aubrey’s written on so many topics relevant to human life. Find a long list of awesome essays on her website, https://aubreyhirsch.com

Get in touch:

Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of Here After with Megan Devine. Tune in, subscribe, leave a review, send in your questions, and share the show with everyone you know. Together, we can make things better, even when they can’t be made right.

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