Andrew James Gregor
Novelist and Architect Examining Fear, Homelessness, and Social Breakdown
About Andrew James Gregor
Raised in Beirut and later based in the United States, Andrew grew up with a front-row view of how conflict, propaganda, and identity can harden people against one another. That perspective sharpened during the rise of Islamophobic violence in America following the 2016 election, when fear was repeatedly misnamed as patriotism. His debut novel, written during that period and published years later, explores how paranoia and hatred corrode communities from the inside, often doing more damage than the threats they claim to resist.
His novel Roscoe has received multiple honours and strong critical recognition. Book Viral described it as “a remarkable work of literary fiction that deserves a wide readership” and named it an unreservedly recommended Golden Quill Read, awarding Andrew the Golden Quill. The novel also received a Gold Award from Literary Titan.
His more recent fiction turns toward homelessness and social collapse in San Francisco, a city defined by extreme wealth and extreme neglect. Drawing partly from his own experience skirting homelessness after the 2008 financial crash, Andrew writes with unsentimental clarity about how quickly stability can vanish and how difficult it is to return once it is gone. His upcoming novel unfolds over twelve hours in the life of a man living on the streets, resisting easy narratives of laziness or moral failure in favour of a deeper examination of structural inequality.
Alongside his writing, Andrew runs a design-build construction company in the Bay Area. With formal training in architecture and interior design and more than a decade of experience in residential construction, he has spent years observing how systems succeed or fail at the most basic human level: shelter. That practical lens deeply informs his fiction, grounding abstract social questions in physical reality.
As a podcast guest, Andrew brings candid and humane conversations about fear, belonging, homelessness, social division, and the quiet mechanics of social breakdown. He speaks with the honesty of someone who has lived close enough to the edge to recognise it.
Latest episodes
Creativity Management with Claire Giovino
Mid-life Men: the mental health podcast
What Curiosity Can Teach Us About the People We Overlook with Andrew James Gregor
Thinking That Matters with Elizabeth Mahusay
Follow Your Heart: The Presence Practice High-Resonance Visionaries Live By | Andrew James Gregor
Leadership Circle Podcast
Key topics
Homelessness begins while people still think they can get out of it
This is a compelling conversation for hosts whose audiences care about housing, inequality, social impact, resilience, or the human stories behind public issues. Andrew brings the topic out of statistics and into the real sequence of collapse: divorce, no work after the crash, sleeping in his truck, unpaid tags, and the fear that losing the vehicle would mean losing his last piece of stability. For listeners, the value is in understanding that homelessness often begins before someone is visibly on the street, when work, address, credit, and dignity start falling apart at the same time. Andrew gives hosts a grounded, unsentimental way to challenge the “bad choices” narrative and explore how quickly ordinary people can become invisible to the systems they once belonged to.
The built environment tells the truth about who a society thinks deserves safety
This is a strong fit for architecture, urbanism, housing, design, construction, civic life, and social impact podcasts because Andrew can speak about shelter from both a human and physical perspective. As a novelist and design-build contractor, he gives hosts a rare guest who can connect walls, doors, zoning, empty units, public space, and hostile design to bigger questions of dignity and belonging. Listeners will hear housing not as an abstract policy debate, but as something built into the streets, buildings, benches, and thresholds they move through every day. The conversation gives hosts a vivid way to ask why cities can have extraordinary wealth, beautiful buildings, and people freezing outside at the same time.
Fear does not need everyone to hate their neighbours, only enough people to look away
This topic gives culture, democracy, anti-hate, immigrant experience, social psychology, and literary podcasts a timely conversation about how fear spreads before violence or open extremism appears. Andrew can draw from growing up in Beirut and watching post-2016 America turn suspicion toward Muslims, immigrants, and anyone who resembled the invented enemy. For hosts, the strength of this conversation is that it moves beyond political talking points and into the everyday mechanics of suspicion, silence, and moral distance. Listeners are invited to examine how propaganda works not only by creating believers, but by making ordinary bystanders just anxious enough to tolerate cruelty.
View all topics →
Latest episodes
Creativity Management with Claire Giovino
Mid-life Men: the mental health podcast
What Curiosity Can Teach Us About the People We Overlook with Andrew James Gregor
Thinking That Matters with Elizabeth Mahusay
Follow Your Heart: The Presence Practice High-Resonance Visionaries Live By | Andrew James Gregor
Leadership Circle Podcast
Key topics
Homelessness begins while people still think they can get out of it
This is a compelling conversation for hosts whose audiences care about housing, inequality, social impact, resilience, or the human stories behind public issues. Andrew brings the topic out of statistics and into the real sequence of collapse: divorce, no work after the crash, sleeping in his truck, unpaid tags, and the fear that losing the vehicle would mean losing his last piece of stability. For listeners, the value is in understanding that homelessness often begins before someone is visibly on the street, when work, address, credit, and dignity start falling apart at the same time. Andrew gives hosts a grounded, unsentimental way to challenge the “bad choices” narrative and explore how quickly ordinary people can become invisible to the systems they once belonged to.
The built environment tells the truth about who a society thinks deserves safety
This is a strong fit for architecture, urbanism, housing, design, construction, civic life, and social impact podcasts because Andrew can speak about shelter from both a human and physical perspective. As a novelist and design-build contractor, he gives hosts a rare guest who can connect walls, doors, zoning, empty units, public space, and hostile design to bigger questions of dignity and belonging. Listeners will hear housing not as an abstract policy debate, but as something built into the streets, buildings, benches, and thresholds they move through every day. The conversation gives hosts a vivid way to ask why cities can have extraordinary wealth, beautiful buildings, and people freezing outside at the same time.
Fear does not need everyone to hate their neighbours, only enough people to look away
This topic gives culture, democracy, anti-hate, immigrant experience, social psychology, and literary podcasts a timely conversation about how fear spreads before violence or open extremism appears. Andrew can draw from growing up in Beirut and watching post-2016 America turn suspicion toward Muslims, immigrants, and anyone who resembled the invented enemy. For hosts, the strength of this conversation is that it moves beyond political talking points and into the everyday mechanics of suspicion, silence, and moral distance. Listeners are invited to examine how propaganda works not only by creating believers, but by making ordinary bystanders just anxious enough to tolerate cruelty.
View all topics →