My name is Morris McLennan. I write hopeful queer stories for the future.

I think art is about trying to communicate truth, and for me, people are really silly and nonsensical and good hearted. It is true that the world is full of suffering. It is also true that my upstairs neighbor is a mean old woman who personally exterminated the rats in our alleyway and sometimes yells at my mom on the phone. It is also true that she has a family that loves her. When I look at these things all together, I think existence is funny and fluctuating and drastically different depending on your lens.

I also think if I’m going to tell stories, it’s my moral obligation to tell stories that make people’s lives better. I want to tell happy stories for sad people. When I was a teenager I did not think I would live to see thirty. I want to reach through time and say, “wake up, asshole, you’re going to live to see a hundred and thirty. Go outside and start living.”

But of course, I will only live to be 130 if we survive the climate apocalypse. I’m not brave enough to kill an oil executive. I’m not tall enough to run for president. But I am stubborn enough to write about the ways that we are going to survive anyways.

My work is about how people are inherently good, but also inherently silly, and we have the power to make the world better, even if just by a tiny bit. I write wacky adventures about regular people, love stories about life, and science fiction about history. And my hope is that audiences know that even though we are living in apocalyptic times, we will be okay as long as we take care of each other.