Ed Sheeran: “Being weird is a wonderful thing”

I've just watched this video from 2015, and thought it was worth sharing. It's singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran talking at a gala for the American Institute for Stuttering. He starts by saying, "I was a very, very, very weird child" and takes it from there. Well worth watching. https://youtu.be/K_3r3SolyDs

Meghan Markle: More than an Other

When I lived in the UK and was asked my identity, I always checked the box for 'Other'. I'm Scottish-Persian, and that made sense there, where Persians are Asian, not white. In the US, where I live now, Persian is considered Caucasian, so I've been tending to check 'Caucasian', in order to play by the …

Nori Shirasu: moonwalking… and writing his own script

Nori Shirasu is many things - a fine artist, a performance artist and an actor. He paints, he dances, he mimes, sometimes he teaches calligraphy and anime, he's writing a book - the list is pretty limitless. Within minutes of meeting him earlier this year, we got talking about not fitting in. Originally from Nagoya, …

Rick Guidotti: Positive Exposure

A few months ago, I blogged about a movie called On Beauty, which features the work of Rick Guidotti of Positive Exposure. Last week, I visited the Museum of Tolerance in LA specifically to see an exhibition of his photographs. It wasn't large, and it wasn't drawing the crowds that the Holocaust exhibits were, but …

Graham Moore: “Stay weird, stay different”

It's awards season in Hollywood, which is reminding me of a great speech at last year's Oscars. Graham Moore, screenwriter for The Imitation Game, accepted his award with an admission that he had once tried to kill himself for feeling "weird". It was a confusing speech. Given the plot of the movie, most assumed Moore meant he had …

John Franklin Stephens: The R-Word

I love this open letter from John Franklin Stephens, Special Olympics Global Messenger, to Ann Coulter, who recently used the word 'retard' in reference to President Obama. Come on Ms. Coulter, you aren’t dumb and you aren’t shallow. So why are you continually using a word like the R-word as an insult? I’m a 30 year …

The Island of Misfit Toys

When I was about ten I had an orangpanzee called Edgar who I spoke through. He was a mutt - half chimp, half orangutan. (He was also a stuffed toy, but it always seems disrespectful to say so. He was such a big part of my working through shyness.) I also had an alter ego …

Chris Colfer

I was harassed at school every day, called 'faggot'. I had things taped to my back." Yesterday my daughter met Chris Colfer. She's 10 years old and has just finished the fourth book in his Land of Stories series. She's been reading them obsessively over the course of the last three months, and when she …

Nancy: Broken Homes and Hand-me-downs

I felt like an outsider, as a child of divorce." When I met Nancy Marshall nine years ago, the circumstances of the meeting really reinforced my sense of Otherliness. Not because of who she is, a researcher in women's and gender studies, but because of the unusual way in which we are related. I met …

Krista: Breaking noses and other rules

I broke my best friend’s nose and that set the tone." Krista Behi Semple is a lot like me – only more defiant. She’s a grown woman who wears tutus and tiaras, and I love that about her. The variables of her upbringing were similar to mine – she grew up in Wales to Indian-Persian and …