At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Lauren Stienstra (B.S. ’07, physiological science) was working grueling overtime hours, providing governors and federal officials with authoritative information as they had to make hard decisions – from statewide shutdowns to the dignified handling of human remains that overwhelmed existing systems.
To counter the toll of her government day job in 2020, Stienstra took up creative writing, which provided her with an end-of-day refuge to redirect her thoughts and productively engage her mind.
While advising government responses to crises, pursuing a doctorate in health security at Johns Hopkins University, and teaching on the side – Stienstra committed to a disciplined writing practice: two hours a night, five nights a week, after her kids went to bed. “Mom time,” she calls it.
She finished writing her first novel in 2022. Since then, she’s written three more.
Her debut novel, The Beauty of the End, was finally published this year. The story draws readers into a dystopian parallel universe, where people and locations might seem somewhat familiar; however, in this world humans have reached their genetically-programmed limit for reproduction.
Among the minority of individuals still able to reproduce is Stienstra’s protagonist, who must make difficult decisions as she comes into adulthood. Will she donate her reproductive tissues and go to work for the government organization creating embryos for future families? Her journey takes her from the U.S. to a remote island in the western Pacific Ocean, where her life unfolds in a way that allows her to reflect on deep-seated questions and define her identity and values.
In this Q&A, Stienstra shares insights into her recently published novel, and on her career path – from UCLA pre-med to a Congressional advisor guiding government responses to protect public health during major crises.
What would you like your readers to take away from The Beauty of the End?
The best compliment is, “This book was thought provoking.” Through this story, I hope readers think about bodily autonomy, what it means to have children, and how we, as a society, would react to a disaster that could be 100 to 150 years away. While we might not experience the most severe consequences, our grandkids or our great-grandkids would. I want to put people in a position to think about what that would mean to them, and how that shapes their thoughts about family and what their contributions could be towards a solution.
What were your interests coming into UCLA, and how did your career path evolve?
9/11 happened when I was in high school. I remember watching firefighters and emergency responders on television, and I started to think about what I could do for my country, for the people around me. I got it in my head that I wanted to go into emergency medicine.
UCLA was my first-choice school, and I was really excited when I got in. I came down to Los Angeles on this pre-med track, and loved the campus experience. But I didn’t love the calculus-based physics. I really started to struggle in that coursework.
Into my third year, I was still trying to make the pre-med thing happen, trying to gather experiences in the healthcare industry to build my resume. I took an EMT class, and worked on an ambulance, also at the UCLA Ronald Reagan hospital, working nights, which probably wasn’t great for my grades, but I still loved it.
In my junior year, Hurricane Katrina happened. I remember watching failures in the health system in Louisiana and thinking this should not be happening in the United States. I wondered if that was the problem I needed to solve. It still had a little bit of that, health and medicine flavor, and I thought maybe I should do a management degree.
I graduated UCLA with a degree in physiological science and a minor in the history of science and medicine. I ended up moving to D.C. to do a master’s degree at George Washington University, specializing in crisis, emergency and risk management. I did a second master’s degree at Washington University of St. Louis, in public leadership.
For the past two decades, I’ve been working with local, state, and federal governments on public health emergencies, including H1N1 influenza, the Ebola scare in 2015, and COVID.
The physiological science degree was helpful in equipping me to be able to talk with the public health people. I understood the vocabulary, the knowledge about disease progression, and what it meant.
Currently, I’m a federal employee working for the Congressional Research Service where I lead a team that advises Congress by providing objective, non-partisan authoritative policy information on disasters and emergencies.
I’m also working on my doctorate in public health at Johns Hopkins University, in health security – the intersection of health and emergency management – preventing, responding to and recovering from disasters, incidents, events, outbreaks, epidemics, and other things that are having a very strong effect on human health and wellness.
How did you get started as a novelist?
While I had experience with bureaucratic policy writing, I didn’t see myself as a creative writer. I decided to do National Novel Writing Month, which encourages people to try and get 50,000 words down in a month. I got to 35,000 words and felt I couldn’t do any more. After letting it sit, I came back a couple of months later and added another 5,000 words. Then, the next November came around, and I added another 35,000. Now I had 75,000 words. I kept writing, until I had 110,000 words. With that, I had clay to work with: I had characters and I had a plot.
The hardest part is just getting the words on the page. Giving yourself time, persevering. You can’t write without words, and you need to get those words on paper.
How did the title, The Beauty of the End, come about?
Before the pandemic, I was living in a community that was relatively transient – some friends were in the Navy, others were working with the State Department. We had grown close as a group of friends, and everyone was moving that summer, except my family.
We had this late-night picnic barbecue, where everyone brought food to share, the kids played in the yard, and we sat as people brought out guitars. There was this collective acknowledgment that this was the last time we’ll do this, and a feeling of just how precious moments like these are. I’m not sure you can realize the beauty or preciousness of something without it coming to an end. The crisis in the book somewhat forces that too.
Perhaps these types of events will help us realize how valuable children are, how valuable families are, how valuable our relationships are. Maybe in these moments, we can find the collective will to do something to preserve what’s good and persevere through catastrophes.
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Dropping us into a challenging crisis for humankind, Stienstra gives us much to think about, relate to, and appreciate in The Beauty of the End.
For a little diversion and escape, perhaps consider it for your next read.
Learn more about Lauren Stienstra on her website.