I’ve been stupid busy recently, but I managed to duck over to CapriCon on Friday for a few hours to attend the SLF Deep Dish reading, and have tea and cheesecake with Andrea Hairston — who has kindly agreed to be on the SLF’s Advisory Board. Yay!
If you’re not familiar with Andrea’s work, she’s written some terrific novels (recommend starting with Redwood & Wildfire), done a ton of theater work, and is a recently retired Smith professor. Andrea has another book coming out soon, and we’re hoping to bring her back to Chicago in the fall when she’s on book tour.
I’d love to have her do a reading at UIC and visit my classes; have to see what I can arrange. We’d schedule a Deep Dish reading around her as well, probably in late September.
We had her as a guest on the podcast, so you can listen to Benjamin Rosenbaum and me interviewing her here: https://speculativeliterature.org/ep-48-show-notes/
We explore the magic of theater, discuss the importance of representation and research, and address the struggle in working with dark and difficult material in speculative fiction. I always learn a lot when I talk to her!
