I thought I was up to speed with VDW's circle of Twitter but somehow missed this news. Emily St. James! Like a plucky magazine writer in an early 2000s rom com. For some reason I assumed there had to be an explanation for the change beyond your description of it, but no, his pinned tweets on the matter are really just "I need a new last name so there."
Of course the handle is still @emilyvdw, because God forbid he change it and lose the bluecheck.
Digging deeper into his account, it sounds like he shed VDW to work through the trauma of his dad's abuse:
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archive)
The recovered memory angle is slightly sketchy, but if he thinks changing his name will help then he has every right to do it, I guess. Though a lot of us carry the names of those who've hurt us, and changing a name is more of a symbolic gesture than a resolution. Idk. Symbols mean a lot to some people. Hard to say how much changing a symbol really changes who you are.
TVDW/ESJ denies choosing Emily because of The Handmaid's Tale:
The Substack link is dead, but he told the story on Twitter too.
He admits he's self-involved, so that's something. Could be worse. Silly as this is, Erin named himself after an actual nonfictional girl he knew.