Astra Taylor

Astra Taylor is a writer, documentarian, and co-founder of the Debt Collective, a union of debtors. She is the author of The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart, Democracy May Not Exist But We'll Miss It When It is Gone, and The People's Platform (winner of the American Book Award), among other titles, and the director of What Is Democracy? and other films. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, n+I, The Baffler, and elsewhere and she is an advisor to Lux Magazine and on the editorial board of Hammer & Hope. A former touring member of the band Neutral Milk Hotel, she was the 2023 CBC Massey Lecturer.

At O&B24 Astra will discuss the intersections of the diverse areas of her work in examining and organizing around democracy, solidarity, and co-founding America’s first union of debtors. She will share from her new book that takes a deep dive into the power of solidarity, bringing it in conversation with belonging and bridging, to find commonality across identity and issue areas to build people-centered politics and societies.