Aftersun: Charlotte Wells on the Father You Cannot Save
Charlotte Wells’ ‘Aftersun’ is a masterclass in depicting the unspoken grief and intergenerational trauma that can ripple through families. Join me as we explore how Sophie, as an adult, re-witnesses her father’s struggles through the lens of her childhood camcorder, and what this powerful film teaches us about radical compassion and the fathers we cannot save.
Last reviewed: June 2026 by Annie Wright, LMFT
- The Aftermath of Unsayable Knowing
- Sophie’s Adult Gaze: Re-Witnessing Childhood Through the Lens
- The Cost of Unspoken Suffering: A Daughter’s Inheritance
- The Rave Scene: A Visceral Depiction of Trauma’s Unspeakable Truths
- Radical Compassion: Holding Calum’s Pain Without Sentimentalizing It
- Both/And: The Complexity of Love and Loss in Family Systems
- The Systemic Lens: Understanding the Intergenerational Echoes of Trauma
- Healing the Aftersun: Moving Forward with Compassionate Understanding
- Frequently Asked Questions
The film ‘Aftersun’ by Charlotte Wells depicts the profound experience of watching a parent struggle with depression and emotional unavailability while being powerless as a child to intervene or save them. The film’s clinical resonance lies in how it captures ambiguous loss, where Sophie simultaneously holds the father she loved and the father she couldn’t reach. This experience of loving someone who was emotionally absent is a specific form of relational trauma that shapes attachment patterns, grief, and identity well into adulthood. In my work with driven women, ‘Aftersun’ names something many of them have never been able to put into words about their own fathers.
In short: ‘Aftersun’ depicts the specific trauma of loving a parent you couldn’t save, capturing the ambiguous loss and lasting relational wounds that form when a child is powerless to reach an emotionally absent father.
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With more than 15,000 clinical hours helping women grieve parents who were present in body but absent in spirit, I’ve seen how this particular wound resists conventional grief frameworks. Pauline Boss, PhD, who developed the concept of ambiguous loss, identifies this unresolvable grief as uniquely taxing to the psyche precisely because it lacks the closure of a clear ending (Boss 1999).
The Aftermath of Unsayable Knowing
The grainy, flickering camcorder footage in ‘Aftersun’ isn’t just a stylistic choice; it’s a visceral, sensory entry point into the film‘s core theme: the adult child’s re-witnessing of a parent’s unspoken suffering. You’re not just watching a movie; you’re being invited into Sophie’s intimate, often painful, process of piecing together the fragments of a father she thought she knew. The subtle shifts in light, the muffled sounds, the awkward pauses. They all contribute to an unsettling sense of unease, mirroring the unresolved questions that linger for anyone who has loved someone struggling with invisible burdens. It’s a powerful invitation to lean into the discomfort of incomplete understanding, much like many of my driven clients, like Jordan, often grapple with when reflecting on their own childhoods.
This isn’t merely nostalgia; it’s a clinical metaphor for the way trauma resurfaces, not always as a clear memory, but as a feeling, a question, an unresolved ache. As Sophie pores over these tapes, you can feel her adult self projecting new meaning onto old moments, seeing the cracks in her father’s facade that her younger self couldn’t possibly comprehend. It’s a profound illustration of how our understanding of our past evolves, often years later, when we have the emotional capacity and the life experience to truly see what was happening beneath the surface. This process of re-examining family trauma is a crucial step in healing, allowing you to reframe your narrative.
The film masterfully uses these intimate, fragmented glimpses to convey the unsayable. You’re left to fill in the gaps, to infer the unspoken anxieties and the quiet desperation that Calum, Sophie’s father, carries. This ambiguity is precisely what makes ‘Aftersun’ so resonant for anyone who has had a parent wrestling with mental health struggles or addiction; you often only get pieces of the puzzle, and the full picture remains elusive. It forces you to confront the limitations of your own understanding, and the profound loneliness that often accompanies those who suffer in silence, leaving you with a deep sense of empathy.
As an adult, you’re often tasked with making sense of the silences and the unspoken narratives from your childhood. ‘Aftersun’ provides a powerful cinematic example of this, demonstrating how the past isn’t a fixed entity, but a living, breathing story that continues to unfold and reveal itself as you grow. It’s a testament to the enduring impact of parental figures and the complex ways their struggles shape our own identities, even decades later. This journey of understanding can be challenging, but it’s essential for fostering a more integrated sense of self and moving forward with greater clarity.
Sophie’s Adult Gaze: Re-Witnessing Childhood Through the Lens
Sophie’s adult self, watching the camcorder footage, isn’t just reminiscing; she’s engaging in a profound act of trauma re-witnessing. She’s bringing her grown-up perspective, her clinical lens, if you will, to moments that, as a child, she experienced without full comprehension. This re-engagement with the past allows her to see her father’s struggles. His depression, his quiet despair, his attempts to hold it all together. With an empathy and understanding that only comes with maturity and distance. It’s a painful but necessary process for many adults grappling with the legacies of their childhoods.
You can feel the weight of her adult gaze as she scrutinizes every gesture, every fleeting expression, searching for clues to the man she couldn’t save. This isn’t about blame; it’s about understanding, about connecting the dots that were invisible to her younger self. It’s a powerful illustration of how our past experiences are constantly being reinterpreted through our present understanding, and how this re-interpretation can be both liberating and heartbreaking. This journey mirrors the work many of my clients undertake in therapy, seeking to make sense of their histories.
The camcorder becomes a clinical tool, a metaphorical microscope through which Sophie dissects her memories, not to judge, but to heal. She’s not just watching home movies; she’s performing an autopsy of a relationship, trying to understand the illness that afflicted her father and, by extension, impacted her own life. This meticulous re-examination is a common, though often unconscious, process for those who’ve experienced clinical betrayal or emotional neglect, as they strive to integrate their past with their present.
This act of re-witnessing isn’t passive; it’s an active, emotional labor. It requires courage to revisit those tender, sometimes painful, moments and to allow new insights to emerge. For many, this process is central to understanding their own patterns, their own coping mechanisms, and ultimately, their own path to healing. It’s a testament to the enduring power of the past and the profound human need to make sense of our origins, even when those origins are marked by sorrow and unspoken grief. This is often a core component of the course I offer.
Intergenerational trauma refers to the transmission of trauma responses and patterns across generations, even in the absence of direct exposure to the original traumatic event. This can manifest through epigenetic changes, learned behaviors, and family narratives. Rachel Yehuda, PhD, psychologist, is a leading researcher in this field.
In plain terms: It’s like a family secret or a wound that gets passed down, not just through stories, but sometimes even through how our bodies react to stress, even if we didn’t experience the original painful event ourselves. You might feel the effects of something that happened to your grandparents or parents, without fully understanding why.
The Cost of Unspoken Suffering: A Daughter’s Inheritance
Calum’s struggle, largely unspoken and internal, costs his daughter, Sophie, a profound emotional inheritance. She’s left with an ache of unknowing, a lingering question mark over her childhood that she, as an adult, desperately tries to resolve. This isn’t just about missing a parent; it’s about the burden of carrying unspoken grief, the weight of a parent’s unresolved issues that inevitably trickle down to their children. You see this often in families where emotional expression is stifled, leaving children to intuit rather than understand.
The film subtly illustrates how Calum’s internal battles, his quiet desperation, create an emotional void that Sophie, even as a child, tries to fill or understand. She’s constantly attuned to his moods, his subtle shifts, trying to gauge his well-being. This hyper-vigilance is a common response for children growing up with parents struggling with mental health, and it can shape their own relational patterns and emotional landscapes well into adulthood. It’s a form of emotional labor that children shouldn’t have to bear.
This unaddressed suffering creates a ripple effect, impacting Sophie’s ability to fully connect with her father, and perhaps, with others later in life. The cost isn’t just the absence of a fully present parent; it’s the emotional scaffolding that was never quite built, the secure attachment that was always slightly out of reach. You witness the profound impact of a parent’s internal world on a child’s developing sense of self and safety, a truth that resonates deeply for many who grew up in similar circumstances.
Ultimately, the film asks you to consider the unseen costs of silence and the profound burden placed on children when parents cannot or do not articulate their pain. Sophie’s journey is a poignant reminder that while we cannot save our parents, we can, as adults, strive to understand their struggles and, in doing so, free ourselves from the unconscious patterns we may have inherited. This understanding is a crucial step in breaking cycles and fostering healthier relationships in your own life.
Dissociation is a mental process that causes a lack of connection in a person’s thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of identity. It’s often a coping mechanism in response to trauma, allowing an individual to mentally distance themselves from overwhelming experiences. Janina Fisher, PhD, psychologist, has extensively written about dissociation in trauma recovery.
In plain terms: Imagine your mind hitting a ‘pause’ button or even ‘fast forward’ when things get too overwhelming. It’s a way your brain protects you from intense pain by making you feel disconnected from your body, your feelings, or even what’s happening around you. It’s like you’re watching your own life from a distance.
The Rave Scene: A Visceral Depiction of Trauma’s Unspeakable Truths
The rave scene in ‘Aftersun’ isn’t just a stylistic flourish; it’s a profound, visceral depiction of unsayable knowing, a cinematic representation of trauma’s fragmented and overwhelming nature. The strobe lights, the thumping bass, the disorienting crowds. They all coalesce into an experience that mirrors the internal chaos of Calum’s mind, and the overwhelming nature of Sophie’s adult understanding. You’re plunged into a sensory overload that bypasses rational thought, much like the experience of trauma itself.
This sequence brilliantly conveys the feeling of being overwhelmed, of trying to grasp something just out of reach, of the mind struggling to process intense stimuli. It’s a non-verbal language for the unspeakable, a way to communicate the profound emotional distress that Calum carries, and the dawning, terrifying realization Sophie has as an adult. It’s a moment where the film transcends dialogue, speaking directly to your subconscious, leaving you with a gut feeling rather than a clear explanation.
The strobe lights, in particular, serve as a powerful metaphor for dissociation, for the way trauma can break reality into fragmented, disconnected moments. You see glimpses, flashes of emotion, but never a complete, coherent picture. This mirrors the experience of many trauma survivors, who often recall events in disjointed fragments, struggling to piece together a linear narrative. It’s a deeply empathetic portrayal of the internal world of someone grappling with profound psychological pain, much like the themes explored in The Glass Castle.
This scene is the film’s emotional crescendo, a moment of raw, unfiltered truth that bypasses intellectual understanding and goes straight to the heart. It’s the moment Sophie truly ‘sees’ her father, not as the playful, sometimes distant, parent of her childhood memories, but as a man consumed by an invisible struggle. It’s a powerful and unsettling sequence that lingers long after the credits roll, forcing you to confront the uncomfortable reality of unspoken pain and the profound impact it has on those who witness it.
Compassion fatigue, also known as ‘vicarious trauma,’ is the emotional and physical exhaustion experienced by individuals who are exposed to the suffering of others, often in a professional or caregiving capacity. It can lead to reduced empathy, burnout, and emotional numbness. Charles Figley, PhD, psychologist, coined and extensively researched this phenomenon.
In plain terms: When you spend a lot of time caring for or listening to someone else’s pain, you can start to feel really drained, both emotionally and physically. It’s like your ‘compassion tank’ runs empty, and you might find it harder to feel empathy or even just feel tired all the time because you’ve absorbed so much of someone else’s struggle.
Radical Compassion: Holding Calum’s Pain Without Sentimentalizing It
One of the most remarkable achievements of ‘Aftersun’ is the radical compassion it grants Calum without ever sentimentalizing his suffering. The film doesn’t offer easy answers or romanticize his struggles; instead, it invites you to witness his pain with an unflinching, yet deeply empathetic, gaze. You’re not asked to excuse his shortcomings, but to understand the profound internal battles he’s fighting, battles that remain largely invisible to those around him. This nuanced approach is essential for true healing.
The film avoids clichés, presenting Calum not as a villain or a victim, but as a complex human being doing his best with the tools he has, even when those tools are insufficient. You see his love for Sophie, his attempts to connect, alongside his moments of withdrawal and despair. This balanced portrayal challenges you to hold conflicting truths simultaneously, a crucial skill in navigating complex family dynamics and fostering genuine empathy for those who struggle. It’s a lesson I often share in my executive coaching.
This radical compassion extends beyond Calum to Sophie herself, acknowledging the burden she carries as the adult child trying to make sense of her father’s life and death. The film doesn’t demand forgiveness, but rather understanding, allowing for the messy, contradictory emotions that come with loving someone who is deeply flawed and suffering. It’s a powerful testament to the idea that compassion isn’t about condoning actions, but about recognizing the humanity in another’s struggle.
Ultimately, ‘Aftersun’ teaches you that true compassion means sitting with discomfort, with ambiguity, and with the painful reality that some wounds cannot be healed by love alone. It’s a profound lesson in empathy, urging you to look beyond the surface and to acknowledge the invisible battles fought by those you care about, offering a space for understanding without judgment. This approach is vital for anyone seeking to heal from complex family dynamics.
Trauma re-witnessing refers to the process by which an individual, often an adult survivor of childhood trauma, revisits and reinterprets past traumatic events or relationships with new insight and understanding, frequently through external artifacts like journals, photographs, or, as in ‘Aftersun,’ camcorder footage. This process can be both painful and profoundly healing. Judith Herman, MD, psychiatrist, emphasizes the importance of ‘reconnecting’ with traumatic memories in a safe context.
In plain terms: This is when you, as an adult, look back at something difficult from your past, but this time you see it with new eyes, with all the wisdom and understanding you’ve gained since then. It’s not just remembering; it’s actively re-experiencing and re-interpreting those moments, which can be tough but also incredibly insightful for your healing journey.
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Both/And: The Complexity of Love and Loss in Family Systems
Both/And: The film masterfully navigates the ‘both/and’ of human experience, refusing to simplify Calum or Sophie’s relationship into neat categories. You see Calum as both a loving, playful father and a man wrestling with profound internal demons. Sophie experiences him as both a source of comfort and a figure of quiet concern. This complexity reflects the reality of family systems, where love and pain, joy and sorrow, often coexist in intricate, interwoven ways.
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This ‘both/and’ perspective is crucial for healing from family trauma. It challenges the black-and-white thinking that often accompanies traumatic experiences, inviting you to embrace the nuances and contradictions inherent in human relationships. You’re encouraged to hold space for the good memories alongside the painful ones, recognizing that both are valid parts of your personal history. This integration is a cornerstone of recovery.
The film doesn’t shy away from the difficult truth that a parent can be deeply loved and also deeply flawed, and that these two realities don’t cancel each other out. This nuanced portrayal offers a profound sense of validation for anyone who has struggled to reconcile their positive memories of a parent with the painful aspects of their upbringing. It acknowledges the complexity of your emotional landscape, much like the journey of Camille, a client who often grapples with these dualities.
By embracing this ‘both/and’ framework, ‘Aftersun’ provides a powerful model for understanding and processing your own family history. It encourages you to move beyond simplistic narratives and to embrace the rich, often contradictory, tapestry of your past, allowing for a more integrated and compassionate understanding of yourself and your origins. This approach is fundamental to the work I do with clients who are ready to connect with me.
The Systemic Lens: Understanding the Intergenerational Echoes of Trauma
The Systemic Lens: ‘Aftersun’ offers a compelling case study for viewing family dynamics through a systemic lens, recognizing that individual struggles are often embedded within larger relational patterns and societal contexts. Calum’s depression isn’t just an isolated incident; it’s influenced by his own history, his environment, and the unspoken expectations placed upon him as a father and a man. You see how these systemic pressures contribute to his isolation and his inability to seek help.
From a systemic perspective, Sophie’s adult re-witnessing isn’t just about her father; it’s about understanding her place within that family system and how her father’s struggles shaped her own development and worldview. She’s not merely an observer; she’s an integral part of the system, and her attempts to understand him are also attempts to understand herself. This interconnectedness is a hallmark of family systems theory, where every member’s actions and experiences impact the whole.
The film subtly highlights the intergenerational echoes of trauma, suggesting that Calum’s struggles likely have roots in his own past, even if those roots are never explicitly shown. This tacit acknowledgement of a larger, unseen history reinforces the idea that pain often travels down family lines, shaping subsequent generations in profound ways. It’s a powerful reminder that we are all products of our lineage, and understanding that lineage is key to our own healing journey, as explored in Severance.
Viewing ‘Aftersun’ through a systemic lens allows you to appreciate the intricate web of influences that shape individual lives and family narratives. It encourages you to look beyond individual pathology and to consider the broader context, fostering a deeper, more compassionate understanding of why people behave the way they do. This holistic perspective is invaluable for anyone seeking to break unhelpful family patterns and create healthier futures for themselves and their loved ones. If you’re curious about your own patterns, consider taking my quiz.
Healing the Aftersun: Moving Forward with Compassionate Understanding
Healing the Aftersun: Moving forward with compassionate understanding after experiencing a film like ‘Aftersun’ involves a process of integration and self-compassion. You’re left with the lingering ache of Calum’s unspoken pain, and Sophie’s enduring quest for understanding. The film doesn’t offer a tidy resolution, but rather an invitation to sit with the complexity of grief and the enduring impact of those we love, even when they are no longer physically present.
The ‘aftersun’ itself, the soothing lotion applied after too much sun, can be seen as a metaphor for the healing process: gentle, necessary, and often slow. It’s about tending to the burns, both literal and metaphorical, that life inflicts, and finding ways to soothe the pain with understanding and self-care. This involves acknowledging your own emotional responses to the film and allowing yourself to feel the echoes of its themes within your own life.
For many, films like ‘Aftersun’ serve as powerful catalysts for personal reflection, prompting them to revisit their own relationships with parents, especially fathers. It’s an opportunity to engage in your own process of trauma re-witnessing, to look back with new eyes and to offer yourself the compassion and understanding you might not have received as a child. This internal work is crucial for breaking cycles and fostering emotional freedom.
Ultimately, healing the ‘aftersun’ means embracing the lessons of radical compassion and systemic understanding that the film so brilliantly conveys. It’s about recognizing that while you cannot save the fathers of your past, you can save yourself by understanding their stories, integrating their impact, and moving forward with a greater sense of peace and self-acceptance. If you’re ready to dive deeper into these topics, consider subscribing to my newsletter for more insights.
Clinically, this is where the story becomes useful rather than merely interesting. When I sit with driven women who recognize themselves in Aftersun: Charlotte Wells on the Father You Cannot Save or in the composite stories named here, the work is rarely about deciding whether the character was good or bad. The more useful question is what your body learned to do in the presence of love, danger, obligation, longing, and shame. That question belongs beside deeper resources such as C2 C6 S12 T2, because the cultural text is only the doorway; the real work is learning what your own nervous system has been carrying.
The healing edge is also often quieter than people expect. It may look like noticing the moment you reach for competence instead of comfort, pausing before you explain someone else’s harm away, or letting another trustworthy person witness what you have been privately metabolizing for years. Those moments can seem small, but they are not superficial. They are basement-level repairs to the proverbial house of life: the beliefs, emotional regulation patterns, attachment expectations, and body memories that shape whether adult intimacy feels possible or perilous.
Q: What is the significance of the camcorder footage in ‘Aftersun’?
A: The camcorder footage in ‘Aftersun’ is profoundly significant, serving as a central narrative device and a powerful metaphor. It represents Sophie’s adult self engaging in trauma re-witnessing, allowing her to revisit her childhood memories with a new, more mature understanding. As an adult, she can interpret her father Calum’s subtle behaviors and unspoken struggles, seeing the signs of his depression or internal conflict that her younger self couldn’t comprehend. This fragmented, grainy footage mirrors the fragmented nature of memory and the way trauma can be recalled in disjointed pieces. It’s a clinical tool for Sophie, enabling her to piece together the puzzle of her father’s life and, by extension, her own emotional inheritance, much like clients in therapy often review their past experiences to gain clarity and insight.
Q: How does ‘Aftersun’ portray Calum’s mental health struggles without explicitly stating them?
A: ‘Aftersun’ masterfully portrays Calum’s mental health struggles through subtle, non-explicit cues, which is incredibly effective in conveying the often-invisible nature of depression and internal turmoil. The film uses his quiet withdrawals, his moments of distant staring, his difficulty engaging fully, and his occasional bursts of frustration to hint at a deeper struggle. The rave scene, with its disorienting strobe lights and overwhelming sensory input, serves as a powerful visual metaphor for his internal chaos and dissociation. By not explicitly labeling his condition, the film invites the viewer to experience the ambiguity and uncertainty that Sophie herself feels, mirroring the lived experience of loving someone who suffers in silence. This nuanced approach fosters deep empathy without resorting to overt diagnosis.
Q: What does ‘the father you cannot save’ mean in the context of the film?
A: ‘The father you cannot save’ in ‘Aftersun’ refers to the poignant and often painful realization that as children, and even as adult children, we are ultimately powerless to ‘fix’ or ‘save’ our parents from their own internal battles. Sophie’s adult re-witnessing of her father’s struggles highlights this truth; she sees the depth of his pain but understands that her childhood self, and even her adult self, couldn’t intervene or alleviate his suffering. This theme resonates deeply with anyone who has loved a parent grappling with mental illness, addiction, or profound unhappiness. It speaks to the acceptance of limitations, the grief of unfulfilled potential, and the necessity of releasing the burden of responsibility for another’s well-being, a crucial step in personal healing and boundary setting.
Q: How does the film explore intergenerational trauma?
A: ‘Aftersun’ explores intergenerational trauma through the lens of Sophie’s adult reflections on her father, Calum. While Calum’s own past isn’t explicitly detailed, the film subtly suggests that his struggles are deeply rooted, likely stemming from his own upbringing or unresolved experiences. His quiet despair and emotional distance hint at a legacy of unspoken pain that he carries, and which, in turn, impacts Sophie. Her adult quest for understanding becomes an attempt to break free from these inherited patterns and to make sense of her own emotional landscape. The film illustrates how unaddressed trauma can ripple through generations, shaping attachment styles, emotional regulation, and the overall family dynamic, even when the original source of the trauma remains unarticulated or unknown. This exploration is central to understanding the complexities of family systems.
Q: What is the significance of the rave scene in ‘Aftersun’?
A: The rave scene in ‘Aftersun’ is highly significant, acting as a powerful, non-verbal representation of Calum’s internal turmoil and Sophie’s dawning, adult understanding of it. The overwhelming sensory experience. The flashing strobe lights, the loud, disorienting music, the chaotic crowd. Serves as a visceral metaphor for the fragmented, overwhelming, and often dissociative experience of trauma. It’s a moment where the film transcends literal narrative to convey profound emotional states. For Calum, it suggests a struggle with internal chaos, perhaps a moment of emotional collapse or a desperate attempt to escape his reality. For Sophie, it’s a moment of unsayable knowing, where she intuitively grasps the depth of her father’s suffering, a truth that words cannot fully capture. This scene is a brilliant cinematic depiction of the unspeakable aspects of psychological pain.
Related Reading
- Wells, Charlotte. (2022). Aftersun [Film]. A24.
- Herman, Judith Lewis. (1997). Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence, From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (2nd ed.). Basic Books.
- Van der Kolk, Bessel A. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking.
- Estés, Clarissa Pinkola. (1992). Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. Ballantine Books.
References
Peer-Reviewed Research (Vancouver)
- Cloitre M, Stolbach BC, Herman JL, van der Kolk B, Pynoos R, Wang J, et al. A developmental approach to complex PTSD: childhood and adult cumulative trauma as predictors of symptom complexity. J Trauma Stress. 2009;22(5):399-408. doi:10.1002/jts.20444. PMID: 19795402.
Books & Cultural Sources (Chicago Author-Date)
- Estés, Clarissa Pinkola. Women Who Run with the Wolves. Vintage, 1982.
- Fisher, Janina. Healing the fragmented selves of trauma survivors. Taylor & Francis Group, 2017.
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Annie Wright is a licensed psychotherapist (LMFT #95719) and trauma-informed executive coach with over 15,000 clinical hours. She works with driven women. Including Silicon Valley leaders, physicians, and entrepreneurs. In repairing the psychological foundations beneath their impressive lives. Annie is the founder and former CEO of Evergreen Counseling, a multimillion-dollar trauma-informed therapy center she built, scaled, and successfully exited. A regular contributor to Psychology Today, her expert commentary has appeared in USA Today, Forbes, Business Insider, Inc., NBC, and The Information. She is currently writing her first book with W.W. Norton.
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