Map is the memoir of Audrey Beth Stein. With extreme honesty, she writes of her struggles in finding a sexual identity with which she is comfortable in the context of college life at the University of Pennsylvania. At a time when homosexuality was an anomaly, Audrey struggles to find her place with friends and to be accepted by her parents. This memoir touched my heart, opened my mind and broadened my perspective. I was lucky enough to interview the author, Audrey, who has my dream future: a writer graduated from Penn!

In Map, you describe yourself as “queer” and “sexually confused.” When did you first get wind of these feelings?
I started consciously thinking about it when I was 19. Looking back, though, I can identify crushes on girls from when I was younger. I think it’s pretty common—after coming out, you have a new way of framing experiences in your past that might not have had a name before. If I were a teenager today I think the process might have happened sooner.

What was the hardest thing for you about being “queer?”
Not knowing. Not being sure whether I was or I wasn’t, and finding a safe space to figure it out. I didn’t want people to see that I wasn’t quite as sure of myself as I was pretending to be.

What advice would you give to other “queer” teenagers?
Enjoy it! Seriously. You’re the first generation—at least here in the U.S.—that has such a wealth of positivity around queerness. There are teens who are coming out as early as middle school, there are gay/straight alliances in a gazillion high schools, same-sex marriage is legal in a few states, celebrities all over the place are out and proud, the internet is there as a lifeline for folks growing up in less-accepting communities...it’s a good time to be queer.

But at the same time, there’s still a lot of hatred and fear out there, and rights that are hard-won can be easily lost, as we saw recently with same-sex marriage in California and Maine. So learn some of the history, and find your own ways to be an activist. Also, if you’re looking for resources to make your Jewish community more welcoming and inclusive, Keshet (www.keshetonline.com) is a great place to start.

How can you advise teens to deal with a friend they think is gay?
Be a vocal ally. Don’t pressure your friend to come out—you may be wrong, or they might not be ready. Instead, assume everyone you encounter might be bisexual, or gay, or transgendered or have a parent or friend or cousin who is—that’s probably true a lot of the time anyway—and make it clear as naturally as you can that you are an accepting person, and that you don’t have tolerance for intolerance.

Do you ever wish you were heterosexual?
No. I’d actually be missing out on a lot, including a lot of self-growth as well as particular people, friends and otherwise, who I’ve met through being queer and part of that community.

In Map, you fall for a girl named Catrina, over the internet. What are your feelings about that relationship now, in retrospect and how has it affected your life?
It was an interesting way to experience first love! When it happened, neither of us were looking for anything to happen. We met via an email list about the Indigo Girls. We started having an email conversation and the feelings took over. And it was much harder for me to tell people that it started over email than that she was a “she.” The process of writing the book, which took me nine-and-a-half years, was important and necessary, because I needed to find the language to talk about what had happened. If we’d originally met in person, I might not have written a memoir at all. So in that sense the relationship has affected my life a lot more differently than I ever anticipated.

When did you realize you wanted to be a writer? How did your childhood affect that choice?
As a kid, I always envisioned having my own book on the shelf one day. I read a lot, and in middle school I would occasionally publish short pieces in my school’s literary magazine and in the local Jewish community newspaper. My senior year, I took my school’s one creative writing class and had to write college application essays. I was surprised to find the college essays to be a wonderful and challenging creative outlet. And that’s when I really got serious about writing.

How does Judaism affect your writing?
At its core, Judaism has given me a way of experiencing and interpreting the world, and I think that comes through somehow in anything I write, whether or not it’s directly part of the subject matter. I write a lot about being an outsider, about wrestling with values, about staying true to yourself—all that comes from my experience growing up in a Jewish tradition and a non-Jewish world. And then I also bring it in more directly, like in my short story “Rooted in Something Called Friendship,” which takes place at an unnamed Camp Ramah, or my essay “Why I Eat What I ‘Don’t Eat,” which talks about wrestling with kashrut and vegetarianism in the context of a Jerusalem terrorist bombing.

Not all Jews accept bisexuals. There is a law in the Torah that “A man cannot lie with a man.” How do you feel about that?
I’d like to take a big permanent marker and cross that line out of the Torah completely and see what happens. Even if you believe that the Torah was literally written by God, there is so much else in there that has been interpreted and reinterpreted over time. For instance, we don’t actually stone people for breaking Shabbat. What I see is that a lot of individuals and communities are using this one law to avoid confronting their own fears and insecurities, and in many cases to justify additional discrimination. And at the same time, there are also a lot of Jewish communities that believe in inclusion and equal rights, and they are not letting that one law get in the way.

What affected you most on your path to self discovery?
I think being Jewish was a huge part of it, mostly because I had no choice as a kid about being different, and so I learned to make that a strength; to value uniqueness and to stand up for myself and my heritage and for anyone else who needed it. I supported gay rights before I had any idea that they impacted me so personally. Although part of me always wanted to effortlessly “fit in,” I put most of my energy into things that made me stand out.

What are you doing with your life now? Are you happy?
Well, for starters, I’m writing! I’m trying to find an agent and publisher for a novel I am writing and I’m promoting Map. I also teach memoir and novel development workshops at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, which I absolutely love, and I have a day job writing code for a bank, which keeps a roof over my head. I’m involved in the Jewish community in Boston and [have] a great group of friends. ...And yes, I’m happy.

Where do you see yourself in five years?
Still writing and teaching, playing with new creative avenues, hopefully supporting myself with work that doesn’t involve a beige cube. Sometimes I think it would be fun to live on an American moshav.

Want to read Audrey’s book? Map can be purchased at http://map.audreybethstein.com

Chava Leiba Sneiderman is a junior at a Lubavitch girls' school in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Writing is her passion, along with food and fashion, and one day she wants a job that will involve all three.