Eleven months ago, Hillary Clinton was poised to wrap up the Democratic presidential nomination, and feminist writer Lindy West came out with a perfectly timed book.

Both memoir and activist in nature, Shrill: Notes From a Loud Woman tackled our societal discomfort with women who speak up, take up space, and fight for their own humanity. West wrote extensively, and hilariously, about her journey to fat acceptance; a comedy writer and long-time fixture in the Seattle comedy scene, she also revisited a very public, painful rupture with much of the stand-up community due to her stance on rape jokes and her ensuing harassment on YouTube, Twitter, and elsewhere. In both cases, she visibly shifted the public conversation in the direction she hoped. Progress was on the move.

Then, Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election. Shrill, which came out in paperback this February, lives on in a very different political moment than the one in which she wrote it. A sober introduction added to the paperback edition captures the newly jaundiced lens her likely feminist, liberal readers might have on the world. “We don’t know if November 8, 2016 was the republic’s last fair election,” she wrote. “We don’t know whether Trump is simply robbing us, or robbing us and seeding a holocaust.”

West wrote the introduction shortly after the election. In January, she wrote a column for the Guardian announcing that she was leaving Twitter; she’s convinced that the abuse she and many others endured on the platform was “a grand-scale normalization project, disseminating libel and disinformation [...] and ultimately greasing the wheels for Donald Trump’s ascendance to the US presidency.” It was a much darker vision of social media than her ultimately hopeful take on Twitter trolling in Shrill ― in one story, also featured on “This American Life,” she has a long conversation with a troll who felt remorse after impersonating her dead father.

“The book is still true, and I still believe in it,” West told The Huffington Post in a recent phone conversation. She felt the book needed to be reframed for 2017, however. “If you write a book about progress, you have to acknowledge when, suddenly, history grabs you and drags you backwards.”

We chatted with West about how her book would have been different in the Trump era, the power of empathy ― and comedy ― and the value of diverse representation. Check out our interview below: 

I’ve always wondered what it’s like to go on tour for a book that was wrapped up and finished a while ago ― and now you’re another year out, for the paperback ― what is it like to keep talking about a book that you finished so long ago, at this point?

I mean, it’s incredible, honestly. It’s really hard to be away from home for so long, it’s grueling, just because travel is grueling, and it’s exhausting and all my clothes are dirty. But it’s also ― what an honor. What a rare honor to get to travel around and meet people and connect with people and hear people’s stories. I think my book is particularly well-suited to touring because it’s so personal and it makes people feel safe and emboldened to tell their own stories.

It’s weird because I wrote it in 2015, and the world is very different now than it was then. It’s an optimistic book ... it’s a happy, positive book, basically. There are sad parts, but the overall message is that kindness pays off and that progress is winning and that you do occasionally achieve tangible victories if you just keep fighting. And then, after the election it was just like, oh man. I have to go out again on tour with this book? So I wrote a new introduction for the paperback that’s like, “Sorry ... let’s talk about the incident ... ”

Did it change how you felt about the book in retrospect?

No, no, not really. All of those things are still true. It’s not like people stopped caring about progress, or kind people stopped caring about other people, or feminists lost. Of course, the establishment ... of course they cheat, and lie, and steal, to maintain control. Because that’s essentially what happened. I don’t really honestly understand how an election can be considered legitimate if there’s documented voter suppression, not to mention gerrymandering and who knows what else. Other people cheating to destroy you doesn’t mean that you were wrong, or that you did a bad job even. Not that the left doesn’t ... have in-group conversations that need to happen and internal critiques that need to happen.

But no, I don’t think, for example, that Trump’s win was because feminists pushed too hard and were off-putting. Or Black Lives Matter was too divisive. Or all these narratives that were immediately pushed right after the election, that what the Democratic Party needs to do is move to the center and not further left.

Do you think you would have written a different book if you wrote it during a Trump presidency?

Mhm, I think so, probably. It would have been less idealistic or something. But I don’t feel like I was really idealistic. It’s just funny because I feel like I’ve been writing about men being horrible and Republicans being oppressive nightmare people for my whole career, so 12 years. And every day under the Trump administration I understand it afresh. Like, oh, I didn’t realize it could actually be this bad.

So I don’t know what I would have written. I think a lot of it would have felt insignificant. It’s really hard for me to think of anything but politics and the government and the people whose lives are in immediate danger. So I probably wouldn’t have written a book about my butt size. Not that the struggles of fat people aren’t important, or the struggles of feminist bloggers getting threatened on Twitter. Those are still important, and the latter, I think, is deeply entwined with the election.

I think if I were to write a book this year ― and I might, actually, I’m working on a proposal ― it just would have been about Trump. I mean, how can you write about anything else? Not him specifically, but the climate and culture that did this to us.

Is that what your proposal is about?

Yeah, indirectly, yeah. I’m not really talking about it publicly yet. But yeah, basically.

You write a lot about comedy in the book, and right now, a lot of comics seem to be struggling with how to be comics in the Trump era. Does that conversation, and comedy in general, feel at all frivolous to you now, or do you think it’s part of the whole resistance?

It doesn’t feel frivolous. I think it’s really important. I didn’t understand it at the time, but in retrospect those conversations that we were having about comedy and about rape jokes are incredibly relevant to Trump’s election. Not that conversation specifically, but the rhetoric that was used and even maybe developed in that conversation, where any time you critiqued anything a white man did, you were called a censor, and you were told you’re violating the First Amendment, and that criticism is infringing on someone’s right to free speech.

I think that had a lot to do with the disintegration of shared cultural values and standards that social justice movements had fought really hard to put in place. Like, “rape is bad.” Just a couple years ago, it was pretty standard knowledge that Nazis are bad! I think the conversation about comedy was totally relevant to that and was a part of that. I see some of the same people who were harassing me over rape jokes five years ago leading groups of alt-right trolls now. It’s not a coincidence.

On the positive side, comedy has always been really valuable as a tool for social change. You can see it happening in real time, in front of your eyeballs. Trump watches “SNL” every week and then ― you know, he kicked Bannon off the Security Council supposedly because he was embarrassed by the way that “SNL” portrayed their relationship.You could see it as encouraging, or you could also be terrified. Or both. It’s terrifying that he’s so easily manipulated, but great that at least we know how to manipulate him, and we hold the tools to do that.

And beyond that, comedy is a coping mechanism, comedy makes people feel less alone. Just for everyone trying to survive and not explode at this bizarre time in history, it’s important to have funny people recontextualizing our lives for us in a way that makes sense and makes us feel like we’re part of a community. And it’s so satisfying when someone points out an absurdity that you hadn’t quite put together, put your finger on before. When someone points out something that you missed, or makes a connection you hadn’t seen, and makes you laugh and makes bad people look ridiculous. It’s really powerful. I don’t think it’s frivolous at all.

There were so many points in your book that are really emotional, but maybe the most surprising for me was “It’s About Free Speech, It’s Not About Hating Women,” when you realize that comedy has been so unwelcoming to you as a woman that you can’t enjoy it anymore. What effect does it have on people to have to accept a certain measure of pain in order to, in theory, relax and escape themselves?

It’s very alienating, and it’s very unfair, because it’s only certain people that have to do that. To tell people that they have to sacrifice some of their humanity and their self-respect to be part of the club, that excludes people from all the things I listed earlier, from being able to feel like you’re part of a community and like you’re not alone and like you’re not imagining these bizarre experiences that we’re all going through right now.

And then it also has economic implications. It affects who makes money, who gets booked for gigs, who quits because it’s an unpleasant environment. And that goes not just for comedy but any field, basically. That’s why I still don’t go to [stand-up] comedy shows really, unless it’s a friend of mine.

I’m glad that I did that, because I think I contributed in a small way to comedy opening up a little bit. It definitely feels different than it did five years ago. There’s a lot more diversity. It’s not necessarily taboo to be a feminist comedian anymore, and I hope that I helped with that. But I’m not ready to jump back into the comedy club. So in a way, congratulations, you guys won, you chased me away. But I feel like I left at least something as a legacy. I left some small amount of change in my wake, and I’m thrilled about that. 

You end up, in the book, circling around this idea of being radically empathetic. Right now, people on the left are asked a lot to empathize with Trump voters, or the white working class. Do you think this kind of empathy can move us forward, or that any kind of empathy can get us out of where we are now?

I think you can have empathy to the extent that people living in poverty need help. People of all races living in poverty need help. I don’t have any interest in developing empathy for people who are racist. The idea that economic hardship made Trump voters racist is ludicrous to me. I’m sorry, black Americans have been experiencing economic hardship for hundreds of years, and they managed to not vote for Trump in massive numbers. It’s just absurd, and to me it feels like an attempt to shift the conversation back to white people and just make everything about fucking white people all the time. Maybe give people some credit for their choices. People chose to vote for Trump. People chose to vote against their own ability to survive. If the Republicans manage to dismantle the health care system, people will die.

You can have empathy for someone without validating every one of their bad decisions. And when we talk about, where was the vacuum here, where was the lack of empathy, it was on the side of people who voted for Trump. People voted for mayhem and death. Those are the people I’m talking to. Maybe think outside of your tiny circle for one second, and outside of your resentment of liberals and outside of your resentment of black people and immigrants for taking part of whatever you think of as your birthright. I think people really do think of this as a white country, for white people. That’s what Make America Great Again means. I’m not even grasping at straws, this is all very surface-level. 

I do feel like if we’re going to look ahead to the next elections, the next round of elections, there are people who love Donald Trump and will never change their minds. And that’s fine. But there are a lot of people who just didn’t vote and who think of themselves as apolitical, and those people are reachable. And a way to do that is to find out what’s happening in their communities and what they need and actually speak to those issues. Because the Republicans are not offering anything. All they do is take and steal and destroy, which I understand sounds melodramatic. But I don’t know any other way to put it at this point. It’s like every policy proposal is like, “OK, what if we took everything away from people and gave it to billionaires, and then let everyone die on the streets?” I guess I don’t really feel like being delicate and gentle and euphemistic about that anymore. It’s just a party of chaos and death. Not that the Democrats are perfect, blah blah blah, caveat caveat.

Of course I have empathy for people in rural America who are struggling and barely getting by. Of course I do. But I don’t think that the solution is mindlessly validating those people’s prejudices.

You have this amazing essay in Shrill, “Lady Kluck,” about the fat women role models you had in pop culture growing up. It really made me think about how we act like diversity isn’t important because we should be able to identify with any character. What’s your response to that argument?

That’s easy for people to say who see themselves represented. Oh, just identify with me! I do!

If you can identify with anyone, then why do you care if media is diverse? You always hear video game dudes being like, “Ugh, feminazis want everyone in a video game to be a black lesbian.” Well, if representation doesn’t matter, then why do you care? Somehow they’re making a representation argument that everyone in a video game should be a white man, while also claiming that representation arguments are ludicrous.

Obviously it matters. If it didn’t matter, then straight white people wouldn’t cling so hard to being the only people represented in media. It matters because it makes you feel seen and comfortable and it teaches people how to treat you. It humanizes you. It’s vitally important.

There are just so many ways in which people don’t know how to tell the stories of groups to which they do not belong, so the only logical answer is to hire diverse staff, hire diverse teams, have people telling their own stories or at least consulting and telling you when you do a bad job. It’s not enough to just expect that we can all just relate to any character. Because it’s not like the any character is being written by any person. People are just writing about themselves and then expecting marginalized people to be thrilled to be invisible.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

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After six seasons, “Girls” has come to an end.

Sunday night’s series finale was both devastating and celebratory. Viewers said goodbye over the course of the last few weeks to the show’s main ensemble: First Ray and Adam, then Elijah, Jessa and Shosh. And finally, Marnie and Hannah. 

While the penultimate episode focused on Hannah Horvath’s respective friendships ― though refusing to wrap them up neatly ― the finale gave viewers a peek at Hannah’s new life upstate with a baby. There was crying and screaming and, naturally, nudity.

In true “Girls” fashion, there were a lot of mixed reviews and a fair amount of notably quotable moments. (Our favorite was Hannah’s mother Loreen telling her, “You know who else is in emotional pain? Fucking everyone for their whole lives.”)

We’ve collected some of the best reactions from women on the web who waxed nostalgic, critiqued aspects of the show, and more:

Thanks for good times and bathroom cupcakes, “Girls.”

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On Monday, at 8:13 a.m., President Donald Trump published a surprising tweet. Surprising for two reasons, in fact: Firstly, it recommended a book of “Reasons to Vote for Democrats” to his followers, and secondly, it recommended a book.

Had the president been hacked? What could account for such an uncharacteristic tweet?

Not to worry ― it all makes complete sense. Reasons to Vote for Democrats: A Comprehensive Guide by Michael J. Knowles is neither pro-Democrat nor, in the traditional sense, a book. It’s a 266-page volume filled with empty pages. (Get it? There are no reasons to vote for Democrats!)

Knowles, who brought out Reasons to Vote for Democrats in February, is hardly the first to use this old gag ― even in this election cycle. For example, back in November, Why Trump Deserves Trust, Respect and Admiration by David King became available on Amazon.

“This book is full of blank pages,” the description says. “Despite years of research, we could not find anything to say on this subject.”

The author includes a helpful hint for what to do with all the clean, unused pages inside: “Please feel free to use this book for notes.” Good idea! Here’s hoping the trees that were pulped for these joke books were not chopped down in vain.

Reasons to Vote for Democrats, despite being completely free of content, has been a top seller on Amazon for weeks. Thousands of consumers have snapped up $6 paperback copies, and the author, 26-year-old Knowles, was invited on “Fox and Friends” in March to discuss his creation.

Setting aside the president’s deliberate trolling of the Democratic Party ― of which a significant percentage of his constituents identify as members ― Trump’s ringing endorsement of a book without any words beyond the table of contents struck some as almost too on-the-nose, given his notorious inability to name any books he has read all the way through. 

Knowing what we know about Trump’s reading habits, it’s little wonder he might define “reading enjoyment” as “not having to read any words” ― now we just have confirmation.

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Ivanka Trump took to her Twitter last week to applaud librarians and libraries during National Library Week. Twitter, however, was not having it. 

In March, President Donald Trump released his proposed budget for 2018, which would gut four independent cultural agencies, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), The Washington Post reported. Cutting federal funding for the IMLS would be devastating for ― you guessed it ― state and local libraries across the U.S.

Per The Hill: 

[IMLS] Director Dr. Kathryn Matthew notes that $214 million of the $230 million budget goes directly to grants to state and local libraries, including $155 million distributed through a population-based formula grant.

So, when the first daughter tweeted about applauding librarians last week, she was not met with much praise. 

The replies rolled in. 

Luckily, there are librarians across the country who are still trying to use their positions for good. Samantha Lee, who works at the Enfield Public Library in Connecticut, told The Huffington Post that libraries are more important now than ever in the current political climate. 

“What’s become more obvious, is how fractured the country is,” Lee said. “There’s been a cultural lack of communication which has fostered misunderstandings and hard feelings. Librarians are sensing this and responding to it. We’re reaffirming libraries as community spaces ― welcoming and safe spaces. We celebrate diversity, intellectual freedom, and democracy.”

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The internet was already a receptacle for television contention when “Girls” premiered five years ago. “Lost” had revolutionized recap culture, analyzing “Mad Men” was an art form unto itself, and obsessing over reality programming ranged from “Bachelor” vlogs to “Real Housewives” snark. But “Girls” was a fresh beast, something that couldn’t be confined to Monday-morning quarterbacking or YouTube satire. It was a rare entity that seemed to fire across every online cylinder, no matter the show’s modest ratings, which rarely surpassed 1 million overnight viewers.

Across six seasons, dropped in a new media culture thriving on reactionary and socially conscious headlines, “Girls” remained one of the most hotly debated series in television history. On Sunday night, it ensured an appropriately messy finale would join those ranks.

Out of the gate, “Girls” was beloved by critics and their readers. Upon its April 2012 debut, The Daily Beast called it the best new show of the year. In a cover story, New York magazine said it was “like nothing else on TV.” The Hollywood Reporter christened it a “brilliant gem.” And yet, as with anything that garners nearly universal praise, the backlash mounted quickly. Faultfinders argued the characters were too privileged, too white and too unsympathetic ― never mind that was the entire point ― while the show’s creative forces were accused of coasting on their parents’ fame.

That backlash persisted throughout the show’s run; it seemed like “Girls” was continually past its prime. The show certainly stumbled through some weak moments, but its ebb and flow in the blogosphere was partly a byproduct of Lena Dunham’s willingness to address criticism head-on, sometimes eloquently and sometimes in ways that redoubled her detractors’ claims. As the lines between Dunham and her character ― Brooklyn writer and ambler Hannah Horvath ― unfairly bled into each other, anti-”Girls” factions and anti-Dunham factions became indistinguishable. And along the way, many who found fault in either did so in the most internet-y way possible: They grew agitated because Dunham and “Girls” didn’t represent the worlds they inhabited, or the worlds they wanted to visit every Sunday night on HBO.

Of course, Hannah and her friends often were the worst ― the “worst best,” as Hannah told Jessa in the penultimate episode. Hannah may have been her “worst worst” on Sunday’s finale, her narcissism and stalled maturation as fierce as ever in the face of Marnie’s help raising little Grover. We’re still working through what it means to hate a character on television, a phenomenon the 20th century’s small-screen relative niceties didn’t necessitate with the same fervor. It felt, at times, like “Girls” had changed. It hadn’t, but the girls of “Girls” did, in at least one important way: They weren’t glued to one another as characters in most friendship sitcoms were. Even “Seinfeld” felt harmonious by comparison.

“Girls” became a series about individuals, not a collective unit. Certain episodes took such a nuanced, slice-of-life approach to these bickerers that we didn’t know what to do with a series that actively rejected its premise, becoming almost the anti-”Sex and the City.”

And then, somewhere in the fifth season, it clicked. Maybe it was Shoshanna traipsing through Japan, or Marnie and Charlie reuniting for a dreamy jaunt, or Hannah realizing her frenemy Tally (Jenny Slate) didn’t have it all. Plots that once seemed ambulatory came full circle, and the characters’ friendships were no longer placed on a pedestal. Suddenly it seemed like many grievances about the show were contradicted by the Brooklynites’ ability to both move on and remain the same.

So, in the wake of the final season’s surprising pregnancy plotline, the finale did what “Girls” has consistently done best: It pissed us off, or it least it refracted our expectations. Twitter lit up with criticisms, though it seemed everyone could at least unite in their love for Becky Ann Baker, who portrayed Hannah’s mom. Vox and Slate called the finale episode unsatisfying, while one commenter on Jezebel’s open thread said it was “mostly blah” and others reiterated “Hannah is the worst” sentiments.

The reactions to Sunday’s swan song prove just how much of a force “Girls” has been within a certain cultural zeitgeist over the past several years. This show was personal in a way that other products of the so-called Golden Age of TV weren’t. (If you didn’t like the “Breaking Bad” finale, it wasn’t because Walter White wasn’t the right kind of meth kingpin.) “Girls” showed what we bring to our television screens in this still nascent millennium: We bring ourselves, and we want something in return for that sacrifice. The finale didn’t give it to us in the customary ways, but we’ll still reckon with this show’s values for years to come. It spawned an entire thinkpiece cottage industry that can’t be diminished.

It brought out our best, our worst, and our worst best. 

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Over the past five years, cartoonist and dad Chris Grady has gained a following with his hilarious web comic, Lunarbaboon. From sleepless nights to noisy toys to full-on tantrums, the comic covers the Toronto-based father’s experiences raising his two young children.

On April 4, Grady released a compilation of his favorite parenting comics called Lunarbaboon: The Daily Life of Parenthood.

The dad told HuffPost he created Lunarbaboon shortly after becoming a parent. “I was dealing with some serious anxiety and depression and the comic started as a form of therapy. The idea was that I would take things that were stressing me out and try and find the humor in them,” he explained.

“It turned out that a lot of what stressed me out was parenting, which is why so many of my comics focused on me as a father,” he added. 

Grady, who works as an elementary school teacher, has a 6-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter. He said his son loves the comics and recently started drawing his own.

Beyond his kids’ seal of approval, Grady’s hope is that his comics resonate with other parents.

“I hope other parents who are struggling with parenthood get the message that they are not alone,” he said. “That life with kids can be hard, but it comes with many rewards.”

Keep scrolling for some excerpts from Lunarbaboon: The Daily Life of Parenthood and visit Grady’s website for more comics. 

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“Free Fire” is about an arms deal gone massively wrong. In satirizing gun violence, Ben Wheatley’s 1970s-set movie depicts a businesswoman (Brie Larson) whose black-market weapons transaction results in a full-scale shootout. 

The Huffington Post has an exclusive clip that showcases the final moments when everything is still peaceful for these shifty dealmakers. Cillian Murphy plays a smooth-talking arms buyer. 

Co-starring Sharlto Copley, Armie Hammer and Jack Reynor, “Free Fire” premiered at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival. It opens in theaters April 21.

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For a show that has reveled in the misadventures of youth, “Girls” cast a pretty accurate picture of the responsibilities of new motherhood in its finale Sunday night.

The final episode, “Latching,” centers around Hannah’s attempt to get her baby (in classic “Girls”-ian fashion, named “Grover”) to latch on so that she can breastfeed. 

The episode takes place five months after Grover’s birth, and Marnie and Hannah have both moved to the country to take care of the baby. Despite having spent his first six weeks breastfeeding, Grover now refuses to take the breast and Hannah is pumping constantly to bottle-feed him. 

There are a million other ways that such ideals lead women to believe they’re not doing motherhood “right.”

“Sometimes there’s something ― the chemistry, the fit, it’s just off,” the doctor tells Hannah, exacerbating her fears that her baby “hates” her. Ever-dedicated to appearances, rule-loving Marnie upholds the sanctimonious ideal of motherhood, as she reads to Hannah from parenting books and says things like, “There’s a reason they call breast milk ‘liquid gold.”

“Girls” chose breastfeeding, but there are a million other ways that such ideals lead women to believe they’re not doing motherhood “right.” In many cases, there is literally no way to do it right, which is why even the most self-assured woman can fall victim to fears that she’s somehow failing at being a mother.

Hannah’s also trying to come to terms with her new identity, wondering if she’s supposed to lug around her breast pump all day at her new teaching job and asks what she’s supposed to do “if there’s a student [she] wants to fuck.” “Girls’” relationship with nudity comes full-circle, as Hannah’s breasts are shown just as casually as they have been for the last six seasons ―only this time, in the sexless context of breastfeeding. 

Hannah is struggling to keep it together. “I can’t do anything,” she explains frantically to Marnie as the baby cries. “I’m still bleeding from my vagina!,” she yells at her mother during a long litany about the physical indignities of new motherhood. In a moment every parent can relate to, Hannah looks at her baby while whispering: “You’re being just a little bit of an asshole.”

During the “Inside This Episode” feature that follows the show, Executive Producer Judd Apatow says, “We started talking about postpartum depression and her mental health issues coming up again.” Ultimately, the episode is about the ways that being a new mother drives you crazy, a perspective that feels less authentically explored than it should be by now. 

Everyone whose life has been changed by parenthood can relate to the difficulty of transitioning to the extreme sacrifice and selflessness it requires.

This, along with Hannah’s concerns about what kind of man she’s capable of raising, made me wish the show had more seasons to portray parenting as realistically as it did the experiences of a certain type of young single woman. 

In a way, both the pilot episode of “Girls,” when Hannah’s parents cut her off financially, and the finale are about accepting responsibility that would be easier evaded.

Hannah has been particularly selfish throughout the run of “Girls,” but everyone whose life has been changed by parenthood can relate to the difficulty of transitioning to the extreme sacrifice and selflessness it requires. 

As Hannah’s mother reminds her, becoming a parent isn’t a choice you can take back. It isn’t a “temp job.” It’s “forever.”

Ultimately, “Latching” ends with a close-up of Hannah’s peaceful face as her baby finally accepts her breast and she hums a song she hates over the closing credits, leaving us with the sense that Hannah is maybe going to be able to leave her narcissism behind after all. 

“It’s all about trying to reconcile that anxious, addled, selfish person with the fact that someone else needs her now,” Dunham told The New York Times. That pretty much sums it up. For parenthood, and for “Girls.” 

The HuffPost Parents newsletter, So You Want To Raise A Feminist, offers the latest stories and news in progressive parenting.

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Julian Lennon is thinking about putting his life story down on paper.

During an interview with The Huffington Post at Build Series, the musical artist and environmental activist said he’s interested in writing a memoir because, after all, “Who knows how long we’ve got?” He added with a smile, “I am hopeful, by the way.”

Lennon, 54, admits that he doesn’t have the best memory, so he’d have to rely on others to fill in the blanks of his life.

“I’d like to get around to that because there are so many memories that a lot of my friends or colleagues that I work with have that I don’t recall because of the time and the place and because of where my focus was as opposed to theirs,” he said. “Even hearing the stories myself that my friends have told me and I’m going, ‘Really? I did that? OK, right.’ So, I’m just as curious, to be honest.”

Some of those fuzzy memories date back to when he was a child, growing up as the son of John Lennon.

“He walked out the door when I was about 3 or 4 years old and we only saw each other a few times,” Julian said of his father.

When asked what kind of impact his dad had on him, Julian said, “As a father, not so much. We tried to make that up toward the end. But musically and as an artist — him along with the rest of the boys [the Beatles]  — there’s probably nobody better. So they’ve always been an influence.”

One thing his late father said, though, has stuck with Julian.

“Dad once said to me on the rare occasions that we met that if something was going to happen to him ... that he would let me know that he was all right or that we were all going to be all right in the form of a white feather. I thought that was pretty peculiar even as a kid,” Julian explained.

Decades later, Julian would remember his dad’s white feather reference, and about 20 years ago while on tour in Australia, something really interesting happened. He received a phone call from the hotel manager where he had been staying asking him to come downstairs because there were about 30 people ― part of an Aboriginal tribe ― requesting to see him.

“I’ve always been a bit shy, so that kind of situation freaked me out a little bit,” Julian recalled.

When he arrived, the members were in a semi-circle awaiting his arrival. The “tribal elder” then walked toward him, handed him a white feather, and said, “You have a voice, can you help us?”

At that point, Julian knew he had to step up and do more than pursue a music career. He wanted to dedicate additional time to helping others, later forming The White Feather Foundation, an organization dedicated to the education, conservation and protection of indigenous culture.

Part of the proceeds of his latest project, a children’s picture book called Touch the Earth, go toward the foundation. The book has children riding on a magical plane called the White Feather Flier, and encourages readers to help save the environment and conserve water. 

For more on Julian Lennon, check out our full Build Series interview below, and go here for more on The White Feather Foundation.

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America has heard a lot from the two people closest to political staffer Huma Abedin: former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom she served as a top aide, and former congressman Anthony Weiner, her estranged husband.

We haven’t heard much directly from Abedin herself, but that may change soon, as The Hollywood Reporter revealed that she is shopping a memoir.

THR reports that Abedin has been speaking to publishers about the project, which she is pricing at up to $2 million. Given her central role in Clinton’s campaign and her marriage to Weiner, whose political career was repeatedly felled by sexting scandals, that price almost seems like a bargain. Compared to celebrity book deals like Lena Dunham’s ($3.5 million) or political book advances like Hillary Clinton’s post–White House deal ($8 million), a couple million doesn’t seem outrageous.

That’s assuming Abedin plans to spill the dirt, of course. THR describes the work-in-progress as “a reflection on how her personal and professional lives collided during the campaign.” Her experience brings together two of the juiciest political stories of recent years ― Clinton’s failed presidential campaign and Weiner’s sexting scandals.

Abedin separated from Weiner, with whom she has a young son, in August after news broke that he had sexted a woman while lying in bed with his son. The couple had previously remained together after two previous scandals, in 2011 and 2013, both surrounding his sexual exchanges on social media and via text.

During an investigation into Weiner’s alleged sexting relationship with a 15-year-old girl, the FBI announced that it had turned up emails that may have been relevant to Clinton’s handling of confidential information on Weiner’s and Abedin’s devices. The revelation ― which came just days before the 2016 presidential election ― kept allegations that Clinton mishandled national security information fresh in voters’ minds and sent shock waves through the campaign.

Abedin has never spoken candidly in public about her husband’s indiscretions, defaulting to an even-keeled silence that she has attributed to her desire to protect their son. Following the dramatic manner in which his digital offenses affected Clinton’s campaign, silence may seem like a less and less viable option.

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The moving new documentary “Last Men in Aleppo” offers one of the most unflinching portraits of the Syrian Civil War committed to film. Chronicling the White Helmets, a volunteer defense group in the rebel-controlled capital of Syria, Feras Fayyad’s film finds humanity in the rubble. After each bombing, the movie’s two central figures scurry through the ruins to rescue survivors. All around them, their homeland becomes plagued by more and more wreckage. 

Above, The Huffington Post has the exclusive trailer for “Last Men in Aleppo.” Winner of the Sundance Film Festival grand jury prize, the doc is a must-see record of lifesaving heroes.

It opens in New York on May 3, with a nationwide rollout to follow.

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“Adulthood is bullshit,” multi-hyphenate creative Hunter Schafer told Dazed when she was selected as one of the Dazed 100, a list that highlights the next generation of youth culture. “And I think some of the most successful and radiant people are those who have been able to get back to that instinctive and child-like part of their selves again.”

It’s an amusing comment coming from someone who, at 18 years old, has accomplished more than many twice her age. Schafer, who has been drawing since she can remember, is a gifted illustrator and comic artist, tweaking the styles of influences like Tim Burton and Skottie Young to create aqueous ink and watercolor images that combine moody fantasy with teen angst. “My parents were really good about not sitting me down in front of a TV,” Schafer told The Huffington Post. “They really nurtured the creative part of me.”

When Schafer got an Instagram account, she started exploring the potentials of photography. Today, with almost 5,000 followers, she uses the platform to hone her artistic vision and weave visual stories about herself and her community. “I became more aware of an aesthetic that I was interested in and wanted to uphold,” she explained. “I realized that just drawing things wasn’t enough for me; I could convey my voice artistically through other mediums outside of two-dimensional, surface work.”

Influenced by David Bowie, Schafer is a quickly evolving artist driven by experimentation, self-discovery and play. Her works break down binaries of all kinds ― between exterior and interior, personal and political, authentic and artificial, serious and fun. 

Schafer is also an activist, specifically advocating for trans youth. Having transitioned at 14 years old, Schafer has actively protested North Carolina’s House Bill 2, which forces transgender individuals to use bathrooms that don’t reflect their gender identity. After the bill passed, Schafer joined a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and began sharing her experiences through art and writing. Though HB2 was technically repealed in March, the compromise passed in its place perpetuates the discriminatory views that propelled the original law, and does nothing to protect trans populations from prejudice or abuse. 

As a high school student based in North Carolina, Schafer has firsthand knowledge of the emotional damage and physical danger inflicted upon trans teens when they are denied the basic liberty of using a bathroom. “Every time I use a public bathroom, I have to make a choice,” she wrote for Teen Vogue. “Do I break the law, or do I disregard my comfort and face the risk of harassment and violence?”

Initially, Schafer viewed art and activism as separate parts of her life. But more recently, she’s begun to experiment with the ways creative expression and political resistance can bolster one another. For her high school senior thesis project, Schafer is working on a series of garments aimed to fight discrimination against trans communities, exploring how imagination can wrestle the body away from binary understandings of gender.

One of Schafer’s recent wearable creations is a pair of bulky red underwear with two large hands covering up the wearer’s genitals. Lettering across the unorthodox undergarments reads: “Peel away every perception.” On the item’s backside is a black-and-white line drawing of a wrinkled face, lips pursed in what resembles judgment. The garment speaks to the absurdity of discerning one’s identity with one particular body part we rarely even, if ever, see.

“The piece is dealing with how people perceive me versus how I feel,” Schafer said. “I am encountering new facets of being trans every day. I need to process that through my work. They’re almost like journal entries.”

Another biographical ensemble, titled ““Pubescent,” is a yellow two-piece featuring felt cutouts of writhing torsos placed atop the wearer’s breasts. The outfit, with its exaggerated, proportions, visualizes the changes a body undergoes during puberty, or gender transition. Awkward, unruly and ultimately beautiful, the outfit visualizes the experience of inhabiting a changing body. 

Schafer also communicates her personal experiences through illustrations, like this 2015 series on Rookie, which navigates the difficulty of dressing up for formal events like school dances, where a strict gender binary was especially enforced. “I longed to escape, and to express what I felt inside me — not what was expected of me,” she said in a statement.

So far, Schafer has enjoyed incorporating the spirit of activism into her art. “I want to do something meaningful with my work,” she said. “Being able to translate my experiences as a trans person into my artwork, and using my work as a platform to support marginalized communities in general, those are things that are really important to me now. They’re definitely becoming part of my artistic identity.”

Aside from the many media she’s already successfully dipped into, Schafer is beginning to explore modeling and modern dance as other modes of storytelling. In part, she credits the internet for eliminating rigid boundaries between artistic disciplines and encouraging young artists to create without limitations.

“The internet is changing the young artistic scene because we have such a fast way to share and react and create our own platforms,” Schafer said. “I think the internet has empowered young artists to create these online personas and carry out aesthetics that they want to try out. We can receive direct feedback from other young artists, react to them, and share and spread our ideas. It’s completely youth led and that’s what is so wonderful.”

Schafer is currently finishing up her final year of high school and is planning to take a gap year before college to live and make work in New York City. Her contributions as an artist and activist are wildly impressive, regardless of the fact that Schafer is still a teenager. Thankfully, the young creative force shows no signs of slowing down or growing up anytime soon. 

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A Texas photographer found a beautiful way to make sure a deployed soldier was part of his wife’s maternity photos. 

Nicole Bedwell was expecting her first child with her husband Wesley when she hired Traci Fugitt of Traci Lynn Photography to do a maternity shoot. Wesley was stationed 7,000 miles away in Japan and couldn’t be present for the shoot, so the two women decided to find another way to make him part of the photos.

“We planned to bring props to give a nod to him being away,” Fugitt told The Huffington Post in an email.

Though Nicole posed with a photo of Wesley and other props to pay tribute to her husband, she and Fugitt also came up with another idea. The mom-to-be asked her husband to pose with his hand outstretched outside in Japan and send the photo to Fugitt. 

“I put them side by side to show the difference between the locations in different countries,” said the photographer, adding that she believes the final image shows a couple waiting together, despite their separation. 

Fugitt said Nicole and Wesley loved the photos, which moved many of their family members to tears. 

Though Nicole’s due date was April 22, she delivered on April 13 after doctors decide to induce labor due to her hypertension. “Wesley was still deployed, and they had already bought a ticket for the first date,” Fugitt told HuffPost. “But Nicole worked for an entire day on the phone getting a new ticket to get him home.”

He made it home a day before she was induced. 

Nicole and Wesley welcomed a baby girl, whom they named Pyper. Though the baby has to spend some time in the NICU due to breathing issues, the family is hoping she will stabilize and go home wit her parents before Wesley has to deploy again. 

Fugitt said they’re hoping to take newborn photos with Wesley before he leaves as well.

But for now, the side-by-side maternity image is a fitting tribute to their family.

Said the photographer, “Even 7,000 miles away, Wesley’s love for his wife and newborn daughter is amazing.”

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Big news, “Frozen” fans and their legal guardians. Last year, we learned the much worshipped and irrationally catchy Disney musical would grace the Broadway stage in the spring of 2018.

Today, Disney Theatrical Productions announced the cast of the highly anticipated production. Meet your newest Disney princess. 

Playing Elsa, the role immortalized by Idina Menzel, is vocal powerhouse Caissie Levy.

Like Menzel, Levy has previously played Elphaba in “Wicked.” Her other roles include Fantine in “Les Mis,” Molly in “Ghost” and Sheila in “Hair.”  

Judging by this 2015 video of Levy singing “Let It Go” ― as mashed up with The Beatles’ “Let It Be” ― families lucky enough to see Levy belt out the ballad in person are in for a serious treat. 

Levy will be joined on tage by some truly magical talent. Playing the role of Anna, as played in the movie by Kristen Bell, is Patti Murin. Her previous parts include Glinda in “Wicked” and Lysistrata in “Lysistrata Jones.”

Along with the leading ladies, the cast also features Jelani Alladin as Kristoff, John Riddle as Hans, Greg Hildreth as Olaf and Robert Creighton as the Duke of Weselton. 

We still have quite a while until winter hits Broadway. In the meantime, “Frozen” will run an “out-of-town tryout” at the Buell Theatre in the Denver Center for the Performing Arts this fall, from Aug. 17 through Oct. 1, 2017.

Single tickets for performances in Denver go on sale May 1, and tickets for Broadway performances will go on sale later this year.

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April may be the cruelest month, but it also happens to be National Poetry Month, a nationwide celebration of verse. An entire month may seem an outsized fete, but the medium, which continues to decline in readership, may need the recognition.

The National Endowment of the Arts’ most recent arts engagement survey shows that fewer than 7 percent of Americans read poetry in 2012, down from 8.3 percent in 2008, and 12.1 percent in 2002.

The claim not to understand or enjoy poetry isn’t only made by disgruntled teens. In a 1919 poem, poet Marianne Moore wrote the oft-quoted line about her own craft: “I, too, dislike it.”

She clarified, however, that, in spite of the form’s imperfections, poetry is capable of evoking images and feelings that are both concrete and genuine. Moore’s lamentations were quoted in an essay by Ben Lerner, whose poems earned him a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship. He says the phrase “I, too, dislike it,” “echoes in [his] inner ear.”

In his forthcoming book Why Poetry?, poet and editor Matthew Zapruder discusses Moore’s poem, too, focusing specifically on the idea that, in order to appreciate poetry both as a writer and reader, one shouldn’t focus on images as symbols or codes, but as literal, sensual experiences. This way of reading poetry, he says, “is what draws us into real strangeness.”

Zapruder goes on to argue that there are some things only poetry can do. Reading poetry, he says, urges the reader to think associatively, to immerse herself in the “half-dreaming” “reverie” of unconscious thought.

Sounds fun, right? But where is a could-be poetry lover to start? Zapruder’s book ― part personal essay, part criticism, part literary guidebook ― is interwoven with suggestions. Below, he recommends “poems that everyone — poets, scholars, specialists, but also general readers — can agree are not only worthy, but a pleasure to read.”

1. W.S. Merwin, The Essential Merwin

“W.S. Merwin, aka The Wizard, writes spooky lyrics that somehow simultaneously manage to be weird and completely clear. Reading his poems is like being in a lucid dream. In this excellently curated book of selections from his entire career, I am particularly partial to the poems from his 1967 volume The Lice, which include great poems of protest against the Vietnam War and ecological destruction, and from his 1997 book The Vixen. His later poems chronicle his old age with stoic clarity.”

Buy it on Amazon or at your local indie bookstore. 

2. John Ashbery, Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror

“A slightly riskier choice, but if you are ready to let language carry you away, try reading this. If you read it without resistance to its strangeness, the book can transport you. And, paradoxically, if you are able to relax and stop looking for big themes, or to exact a single coherent message from every poem, deep ideas will (as in poems like ‘The One Thing That Can Save America’) emerge.”

 Buy it on Amazon or at your local indie bookstore.

3. The Golden Shovel Anthology, ed. Peter Kahn, Ravi Shankar, and Patricia Smith

“This is a good choice, because it will not only introduce you to the work of Gwendolyn Brooks, one of America’s great poets, and the first African American author to win the Pulitzer Prize, but to a wide variety of contemporary American poets. ‘The Golden Shovel’ is a poem by Terrance Hayes (from his book Lighthead), which invents a form based on Brooks’s famous poem, ‘We Real Cool.’ Hayes’s poem uses each word of Brooks’s poem as the last word of a line, so that you can read ‘We Real Cool’ all the way down the right margin of the poem (this makes more sense if you see it on the page). The Golden Shovel Anthology presents poems by hundreds of American poets using poems by Brooks to write poems based on Hayes’s form. The book is a pleasure to read, and a generous, wide-ranging anthology.”

 Buy it on Amazon or at your local indie bookstore.

4. Selected Odes, Pablo Neruda, trans. Margaret Peden

"Though not written in English, these poems have had a profound and continuing influence on American poetry. Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s 'Odas Elementales' were originally written to be published on the front page of a newspaper, and were designed (like so much of Neruda’s poetry) to be read by anyone. Each poem meditates on an object (often a common household one, like socks or a table or an orange), and uses it to speculate, associate, play, and dream. I like these particular translations, as well as the fact that the poem in the original Spanish is in the book. I also like a more recent edition, All the Odes, ed. Ilan Stavans, which includes an extensive introduction and different versions by multiple translators of many of the best known odes."

 Buy it on Amazon or at your local indie bookstore.

5. James Tate, Dome of the Hidden Pavilion

"The great American poet James Tate died in 2015, leaving behind a body of work that includes some of the most memorable, funny, strange and exciting American poetry of the past 50 years. In his recent work, he wrote poems that were close to short stories, pushing the form as close as possible to a kind of folksy, casual anecdote. Somehow, in bringing the poems so close to prose, what is essential about poetry — what continues to be there whether or not the poems rhyme, or contain imagery or metaphor, or any of the other things we usually associate with poetry — remains. This is Tate’s most recent book, and contains some of his most haunting and appealing poems. It’s a great gateway drug for people who think they prefer prose to poetry."

 Buy it on Amazon or at your local indie bookstore.

6. Frank O’Hara, Lunch Poems

"Imagine you have the most incredibly charming, handsome, witty, brilliant, kind friend, one who is willing to walk all over Manhattan with you, talking about books and art and also what he sees around him, and what that all makes him feel inside. Imagine his favorite thing to do is to spend his lunch hour with you. That’s what reading these poems is like. These poems were the prototype for a chatty, casual, intelligent, witty, occasionally biting but just as often sweet and tender poetry that continues to be written by American poets today. San Francisco’s City Lights Books, the original publisher of the volume, recently reissued this 50th anniversary edition that includes some supplementary material, but retains the book size and shape, perfect for being placed into a pocket for a walk."

Buy it on Amazon or at your local indie bookstore.

7. Victoria Chang, The Boss

"This harrowing, at times funny, ultimately heartbreaking book was written by a poet who makes her living in the financial industry, conjures the anxieties of being a cog in the capitalist machine. But the book is also deeply personal, weaving together the concerns of a daughter to a father suffering from dementia. You can read all the prose you want about these sorts of things, but only the best poetry can bring you so dangerously close to these familiar experiences, in a way that comforts, disturbs, clarifies and complicates what we think we know."

Buy it on Amazon or at your local indie bookstore.

Matthew Zapruder’s Why Poetry? is out this summer.

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ICYMI: Writing is hard. Even if you do manage to finish that novel you’ve been working on, the obstacles standing between you and your publishing goals abound. And, even writers who do succeed will likely have to work a separate job to support themselves.

If you’re a woman ― especially a woman of color ― there are added hitches. Your work is less likely to win awards, less likely to be reviewed by major outlets, and, when it is reviewed, it’s more likely to be stereotyped as domestic or family-centric than men’s work is.

There are other, less easily quantified hurdles, too, which Chocolat author Joanne Harris began to list under the Twitter hashtag #ThingsOnlyWomenWritersHear on Monday. She wrote that, when on a book tour with a male publicist, or with a fellow writer who was a man, she has been mistaken for a publicist and not an author.

She continued by noting questions and assumptions she often hears in her line of work, including, “Who does the housework when you’re away?” and “But your husband puts food on the table,” even though she’s been her family’s main breadwinner for over two decades.

A chorus of women writers chimed in, including Wild author Cheryl Strayed and Outlander author Diana Gabaldon. The anecdotes run the gamut, and each is illustrative of the pernicious acts of sexism faced by women in creative fields. 

UPDATE: A new hashtag, #WhatWoCWritersHear, has been created to address specific experiences of women writers of color. 

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Photographer and mom of three Julie Blackmon finds creative inspiration in her suburban surroundings.

Over the past 10 years, she’s photographed her family and neighborhood in Springfield, Missouri for a series she calls “Homegrown.” The photos combine the whimsical and mundane, as she gives scenes of everyday life an artful twist. 

“I was inspired by the everyday moments of my life, as well as my sisters’ lives,” Blackmon told The Huffington Post. “At the time, several years ago, it just seemed like I needed to document this time of our lives (and our children’s) in some way. But as I got into the work, I became more of a creator than a straight documentarian, and began to take more of fantastical viewpoint.”

The photographer said she wanted to capture something about the culture and time period in which her life existed. “Doing it this way also allowed me to look at the stress, chaos and darker subject matter in our everyday lives in a more lighthearted way,” she added.

As her children have grown up, Blackmon focuses less on home life, but she continues to draw inspiration from her suburban Springfield world. 

“Living your entire life in the same neighborhood might seem to be a limitation ― finding subject matter in a generic town with a generic name that is smack dab in the middle of the United Sates,” she told HuffPost. “But to me, it’s all about a sense of place and identity ... And maybe the conflicting tensions that arise here, whether it’s about parenting, politics or religion are an exaggerated representation of what is happening everywhere.”

Blackmon has displayed sets of her domestic life photos at galleries across the country and abroad and in 2014, published a photography book called Homegrown.

“My favorite moments are at openings when people respond to me after seeing the work for the first time in person,” she recalled. “I remember an older lady coming up to me and saying ‘you know how to look at hard things in life in such a happy way.’ It was that simple but it meant everything.”

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Warning: “Fate of the Furious” spoilers ahead.

Calling the “Fast and the Furious” series a full-throttle success is an understatement. Having grossed $4.4 billion worldwide and counting, Universal Pictures’ most successful franchise in history now has one mantra: Bigger is better. So far, so good, considering “The Fate of the Furious” just landed the largest global opening weekend of all time.

At this point, bigger means revving up the plots to include a tangled web of villains (Charlize Theron’s dreadlocked Cipher is the latest) and villains-turned-heroes (Jason Statham’s Dackard Shaw has joined the family after they targeted his terrorist brother, Owen). Still, all this gravity-defying action must come to an end at some point, right? Based on the title alone, “The Fate of the Furious” sounds like a solid climax for this long, expensive ride. 

Nope! No way. You see, “The Fate of the Furious” introduces a whole new trilogy, according to Vin Diesel, who’s appeared in almost every installment since the 2001 original. With “Fate of the Furious” marking the eighth entry, that guarantees us at least 10 movies in total, not to mention talk of spinoffs surrounding individual characters. 

Now there’s another way Universal can keep this franchise speeding into the future: little baby Brian. Named after the late Paul Walker’s police-officer protagonist, Brian was introduced in “The Fate of the Furious” as the charming infant son of Dom (Diesel) and Brazilian cop Elena (Elsa Pataky). He’s already pivotal to the plot, with evil Cipher kidnapping Brian as ammo so Dom will subscribe to her vague plot to secure Russian nuclear codes. The tyke survives and Dom returns from the dark side, joining the crew for a rooftop barbecue after they vanquish Cipher and her cronies (for now). 

Thus, the potential future of the “Furious” has been sealed. If Universal wants to keep the franchise alive for eternity, all it has to do is put the storyline in this baby’s hands. (Too bad “Baby Driver” is already a movie title.) End the 10th installment with Dom teaching a teenage Brian how to take over the family’s vigilantism, and we’ve got 10 more films on our hands. Yippee. 

“Fast and the Furious” releases have become a biennial April tradition. One could argue they alone are why summer blockbuster season now spans spring, too. With studios slating sequels years in advance, Universal will soon consider whether to extend this property’s shelf life past April 2021, at which point it will have been running red lights for a whopping two decades. It makes sense: The physics-agnostic stunts get crazier with every go-round, and the series remains a force to be reckoned with among audiences of all races. To boot, the plots are so ludicrous that they have effectively become critic-proof.

If nothing else, we can expect wee Brian to make another showing in the ninth outing, which will open in 2019. Director F. Gary Gray and the cast have sung the little actor’s praises. “He was really smiling all the time,” Pataky told The Hollywood Reporter. “One of the scenes ... he was actually pulling Vin’s hand and saying, ‘Da-da, da-da.’ I couldn’t believe it. He is going to have a big career.”

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Sometimes, the most beautiful things are those you can’t see with the naked eye.

Take flowers, for instance. As beautiful as they are in normal lighting conditions, their true colors come out when you see them under ultraviolet light. 

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“Late Show” host Stephen Colbert is a longtime evangelist of new books. During his tenure at “The Colbert Report,” he hosted authors like National Book Award winner Phil Klay, and literary darlings Toni Morrison, John Green and Michael Chabon.

Now, Colbert is coming out with his own book ― his sixth, including a co-written title in 2004, and the 2012 children’s book I Am a Pole (And So Can You!).

Colbert’s latest ― Midnight Confessions ― is based on the “Late Show” segment of the same name, where the host finds time for “one of his favorite Catholic rituals” by sitting in a makeshift confessional and substituting the audience for a priest. The book will include his confessions as well as audience submissions, and will be released by Simon and Schuster on Sept. 5, Hollywood Reporter writes.

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