Volume Six: Chapter Seventeen - Our Conversation with Kestral Gaian

Our guest this week is a Scotland, United Kingdom–based writer, poet, playwright, and author. Kestral Gaian, who is the author of four books, including their most recent poetry collection, Tubelines: The Poetry of Motion, available now via their website and wherever books are sold. In our conversation, we trace Kestral’s parallel paths through creativity and technology — including a lengthy career in software and tech — and how those two worlds increasingly collide. That collision leads us into a thoughtful discussion of artificial intelligence, creative labor, and authorship, sparked by Kestral’s project justsayno.ai. We talk candidly about over-reliance on AI, creative disruption, and the growing concern that AI may help people produce writing without necessarily helping them become writers. From there, we move into Kestral’s creative history: starting to write at the age of five, transitioning from storytelling into poetry, and grappling early on with questions of identity and representation. Growing up under the shadow of the UK’s Section 28 — legislation that erased queer stories from schools and libraries — profoundly shaped what felt possible to write. We talk about silence, visibility, and the long-term effects of being told certain stories shouldn’t exist. The conversation then turns to Tubelines, a poetry collection written over five years and inspired by fifty encounters on the London Underground. We talk about people-watching, movement, routine, and the quiet humanity that reveals itself in shared spaces.Contact Kestral:Instagram: @kes.tr.al        Website: kestr.al Recorded Spoken Word Performances Featured Include: Toni Payne – Let the Headline ScreamInstagram: @tonipaynequotes          Website: tonipayneonline.com Meccamorphosis – Thrift ShopInstagram: @meccamorphosis          Website: meccamorphosis.comAsia Samson – As I AmInstagram: @theasiaproject       Website: theasiaproject.comChristopher Diaz: AgainInstagram: @lightbulbchris          Website: christopherdiazcreates.com Matthew Cuban: ShotgunInstagram: @matthewcuban         Website: matthewcuban.com  Support the show