Steven Reigns and I had been emailing for months. As I prepared for the release of my debut poetry collection , writers and editors from multiple regions of the queer writing universe strongly encouraged me to reach out to Steven. This was partially due to the similarities in our work; Steven and I are both writing around queerness and AIDS. My collection DEAD BOYS IN SPACE uses speculation, sci-fi and space travel to think about the AIDS crisis, generational grief, memory, sex and sickness.  Meanwhile, Steven’s 2025 collection Outliving Michael is both memoir and memorial, and is written towards Steven’s close friend Michael Church, who died of AIDS in 2000. Now, of course, I’ve come to realize that people pushed me towards Steven because he is generous and warm, as well as talented and prolific. So we emailed. I asked for advice and, more daringly, a very last-minute blurb. The conversation kept rolling and we dreamed up an interview to formally bring our words together.…