Laurie Stone and Richard Toon—writers, artists, and married partners—join Laura Federico to explore desire as a creative force and the relationship between vulnerability and art-making. They discuss why desiring is more pleasurable than being desired, the etymology of desire as "wishing for what the stars would bring," and how writers must create space for readers without needing anything from them. The conversation moves through the dangers of self-expression versus art-making, the role of embarrassment and failure in honest writing, and how gender constricts experience. They reveal the surprising emotional dividend of their recent marriage after years together, and why looking bad on the page is essential to good art.

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Laura Federico

The Cycle Book

Laurie's Substack

Richard's Substack

Their Vows Column

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03:17 — Is it better to desire or to be desired?

03:35 — Richard on being a desirous person all his life

04:01 — The etymology of desire: "to wish for what the stars would bring"

06:41 — "Desire fulfilled is desire destroyed"

08:00 — How Substack closes the loop of reciprocal desire

09:40 — Teaching readers how to read you over time

12:10 — The narrator can't need anything from the reader

16:02 — Writing as "coming and going rather than beginning and ending"

16:43 — When readers misidentify the project

18:07 — "Welcome to our generation"—on constriction in younger writers

19:18 — The human condition: "the little naked ape trying to make sense of it"

21:19 — Art-making as more like making shoes than self-expression

23:40 — "Looking bad is the best thing in the world for art"

28:26 — How Laurie proposed

29:27 — The marriage dividend

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Our music, Hit Her Up, is written by Nakisso Peralta and performed by Chillers.