Welcome to Words Matter with Katie Barlow and Joe Lockhart.

This is the Words Matter Library.

Our guest today is an actor, filmmaker, writer, activist, and poet.

Her acting credentials include Joan of Arcadia, the sisterhood of the traveling pants,

House, and she will next be seen on FX's Why the Last Man.

Her written work has been featured in The Cut and The New York Times.

Amber Tamlin's latest book, Era of Ignition, coming of age in a time of rage and revolution

is out next week in paperback.

Amber Tamlin, welcome to Words Matter.

Thank you so much for having me.

So I want to get to the book, but actually before we dive in on that,

I want to take you back to September 2017 when you wrote an op-ed for The New York Times

entitled, I'm Done with Not Being Believed.

And in it you detailed some of your experiences with sexual harassment in Hollywood.

Now that was just a few weeks before the Times published Jodie Cantor and Megan Tuey's

Pulitzer Prize winning reporting on Harvey Weinstein.

So why did you decide to write that article at that time?

That was a really interesting period.

I think when we look back in American history too, we will see that it was a breaking point

for a lot of women and for a lot of men too who've also been sexually assaulted in her assed.

And I had written that piece actually a few months before, but it was sort of in the zeitgeist.

And women had been talking about it more personally and privately than they had,

...