On Survival, Storytelling, and the Absurdity of Hostels
Q: What first compelled you to transform a personal trauma into a body of work?
A: In 2023 I was stabbed in my own home — a moment that split my life into before and after. The institutions I turned to for help failed me in ways that were almost as violent as the attack itself. I realized quickly that I had two choices: to remain fixed in the role of victim, or to turn the narrative outward, into something generative. Impact Narrative Media came directly from that realization. If my voice wasn't being heard, then I would build a platform where not only I but others like me could no longer be silenced.
"Survival is more than the absence of death. It is what you construct in the aftermath."
Q: You've pursued multiple paths — publishing, advocacy, hospitality. Why not narrow your focus to one discipline?
A: Because life after trauma refuses linearity. Each project emerges as a branch from the same root. Justice Sans Frontières was born from the experience of watching lawyers weaponize procedure against the vulnerable. Immigration Sans Frontières came from standing beside friends who were abandoned by the very systems designed to protect them. And the hostel — perhaps the strangest branch — is about community, about creating a space that is simultaneously fragile and resilient. These are not separate ventures; they are facets of the same resistance.
Q: How do you sustain creativity across such divergent enterprises?
A: I keep a discipline of record-keeping. For the hostel books I invented what I called the Death Matrix — tracking not only scenarios but tones, settings, archetypes. I've applied the same rigor to advocacy: every communication, every document, every contradiction catalogued. It may sound clinical, but survival is partly about documentation. To map is to resist erasure.
Q: Which piece of writing has been the most difficult for you?
A: Putting the attempted murder into words for the first time in court filings. There is a violence in transcription — in reducing the chaos of memory to a page. But it was also liberating. To write the facts down was to reclaim them, to wrest them back from lawyers who wanted to distort or dismiss them.
Q: And which project has been most joyful?
A: Oddly enough, the hostel. It is chaotic, sometimes maddening, but it is also alive in a way few spaces are. People arrive as strangers and leave with stories, and some of those stories are absurd, hilarious, occasionally terrifying. In that absurdity I find joy — because it insists that even the most precarious spaces can be sites of connection.
"Humor, for me, is not denial but defiance. I refuse to let violence have the last word."
Q: You move between darkness and humor. How do you maintain that balance?
A: Humor, for me, is not denial but defiance. I refuse to let violence have the last word. To laugh at the absurdity of a collapsing bunk bed or a malfunctioning washing machine is to strip death of some of its power. I am careful, though: I never laugh at suffering itself. The line is fine, but it matters.
Q: Your series contains a recurring figure, @HostelReaper. Does that character mirror your real life?
A: @HostelReaper is many things at once — a graffiti tag, a phantom, a rumor. For me it also symbolizes trauma itself: the thing that never fully leaves, that haunts the margins. I never resolve it in the books because, frankly, I haven't resolved it in life. Perhaps none of us do.
Q: How much of your work is autobiographical?
A: More than I admit openly. Roughly a third of the "death scenarios" in the books are drawn directly from lived experience, whether mine or fellow travelers'. The remaining two-thirds are extrapolations — what happens when the stain on the ceiling finally breaks through, when the unstable staircase gives way. In my advocacy, the ratio is inverted: mostly lived experience, sharpened into something systemic.
Q: What has been your most difficult hostel memory?
A: The night my own address — 4460 Christophe-Colomb — became both a home and a crime scene. It was a paradox I could neither reconcile nor escape. In many ways, that moment became the seed for everything I have done since.
"To map is to resist erasure."
Q: You've been described as a voice for millennial and Gen Z resilience. Do you accept that?
A: Labels are dangerous, but I understand the impulse. If younger readers or travelers see themselves in my work — in the absurdity, in the defiance — then perhaps it serves a purpose. I am not comfortable as a poster child, but I am willing to be a mirror.
Q: What response has surprised you most?
A: That even those I critique — hostel owners, lawyers, institutions — sometimes embrace the work. A hostel in Amsterdam themed a room after one of my books; a lawyer I challenged privately admitted he respected the way I documented his contradictions. Recognition, even twisted recognition, can be strangely affirming.
Q: What does the future hold?
A: I no longer want to build around death. The next chapters will be about life — mentorship, education, systems that endure. The trauma is always present, but it need not define the horizon.
Q: And if there is a single message you hope readers or listeners carry away?
A: That survival is more than the absence of death. It is what you construct in the aftermath. My message is simple: you are worth more than the narrative others try to reduce you to.
"If even one person understands that they are not merely a victim but a builder — then all of this has been worth it."
"You are worth more than the narrative others try to reduce you to."