We recently connected with Brieanna Gold and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Brieanna, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I think writing my first book Sad Fucking Poems was the most meaningful project i’ve done, i used to be in some shitty pop punk and emo bands back in the day in jersey and as things moved away from the kind of music i made being successful and then when covid first happened and it felt like live music was never going to return i went through a bunch of notebooks of lyrics and scrapped ideas and decided to rework them into poems instead of full songs, and then i did everything for the book, editing, styling etc i hired a friend to make the cover art for me and as time went by I realised more and more things i didnt like about it, the art wasnt my vision and there were a ton of typos I missed because i was so focused on just getting it released. And so a few years later i had taught my self some graphic design, redesigned the entire cover and re edited and redesigned the whole book and that process is what put me on the path for the entire endeavour of all of my books going forward as well as my collective of Ad Astra Presents as a whole

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I grew up in the pop punk and emo scenes in Jersey, making music, going to and playing shows has always been a huge part of my life. After coming out as trans in the first year of covid it became apparent that i wasn’t going to be able to do those things the way i used to, so i took my old lyrics and made it a book, and then i kept writing and then i made a second book and then i kept writing and i have enough for 5 books now i just have to get off my ass and do the editing haha. At the same time as this i started doing graphic design stuff at first it was just my book covers then it was stuff for my partner at the time and then i started making logos and show fliers and i decided that i wanted to make a collective style thing like how we used to do for the local bands, so thats where Ad Astra Presents comes from, the idea of community and being more than just my own brand, so anyone that wants a show flyer or a band logo or an album cover immediately becomes part of the Ad Astra Presents community, the constellation if you will, a bunch of separate parts all making a single image. Thats the idea of it anyway for me.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Stop using AI. Honestly it makes slop and destroys the environment and takes away the need for people to hire artists why pay an actual artist to do something when an ai will do it for free? Because it’s gross and lacks soul, even if you dont care about the environmental impact of it all it lacks soul in every way and if your complaint is that artists arent getting the vision you want then explain it better or hire a different artist

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

For the entirety of Ad Astra Presents, it’s Community, plain and simple.

For my own poetry, in the simplest words, i want to make art for people to enjoy and see that they aren’t dealing with their shit alone. I want to make art that makes people not feel as alone as i have for my entire life

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/ad.astra.presents
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ad.astra.presents