About the Author

P.N. Yaya is a problem solver. On a spring morning in 2009, broke and freshly out of a job, flying to sit with a grieving relative, he was handed the idea this book is built on. It arrived on its own, as a phrase, and it turned out to be one of the most significant insights of his life. He's spent the years since trying to prove it wrong rather than defend it, and he hasn't managed to.

He isn't a professor and doesn't hold an advanced degree. What he has instead is a lifetime of walking directly into conflict and paying attention to what happens there. He has spent close to two decades in the entertainment industry — several years of it as a child, and then as a writer, director, and producer from 2010 onward — and he still writes for film, television, and fiction. For three years and more than a hundred episodes he hosted a long-form interview podcast, where he learned that almost anyone will tell you something true if you make it safe for them to do so.

Since 2021 he's represented himself in civil litigation, including at the appellate level. He didn't do it to win. He did it because he'd watched people with power lean on people without it, and because a case that goes unfought becomes permission. He was after precedent: a ruling that would make it a little harder to do the same thing to the next person, someone he'll never meet.

He was raised Catholic, spent years outside the institutional church seeking a direct relationship with God on his own terms, and was baptized a second time in 2024. What he takes from that, and from his faith, is a plain conviction: that we're here to be of service to one another, and that the work of a life is to leave this place better than we found it.

He lives in Los Angeles.