Monday, May 1, 2017

Andrea Hairston & L. Timmel Duchamp reading in Seattle this week

I hope to see some Seattle-area friends of Aqueduct on  Thursday evening this week, when Andrea Hairston, accompanied by Pan Morrigan, and I will be appearing at the University Bookstore in Seattle at 7 pm. Here's the event description from UBS's event calendar:

The Waterdancer's World and Will Do Magic for Small Change (ADUEDUCT PRESS)
Thursday • May 4 • 7pm
U District store
Discussion & Book Signing 


The Waterdancer's World and Will Do Magic for Small Change

Discover two richly imagined new works of science at this exciting discussion and signing with authors L. Timmel Duchamp and Andrea Hairston .

For almost 500 years, humans have struggled to adapt themselves to the punishing gravity and hallucinogenic plants that dominate the planet Frogmore's ecology in Duchamp's The Waterdancer's World. Inez Gauthier, daughter of the general commanding the planets occupation forces, dreams of eliminating the deadly spores that have impeded efforts to crush the native insurgency and fully exploit the planets resources. She's fascinated by the new art-form of waterdancing, which celebrates the planets indigenous lifeforms and assumes her patronage will be enough to sustain it even as she ruthlessly pursues profit at the expense of all that made this art possible. Readers navigate an alien planet through the eyes of five individuals and an analytical guidebook called "A Star-Hoppers View of the Galaxy" in this thought-provoking book.

Hairston offers a potent blend of West African religion and history, magic, science fiction, theater, in Will Do Magic for Small Change. The curtain opens on Cinnamon Jones, a young theatrically challenged aspiring actress living in Pittsburgh during the 1980s. Cinnamon's half-brother, Sekou, is dead and her family life is a tangle of mystery and secrets. But before Sekou passed away, he gave her a book called The Chronicles of the Great Wanderer—the story of an extradimensional being who first materialized in the embattled West African kingdom of Dahomey in 1892. Whether The Chronicles are magic or alien science, Cinnamon can't be sure, but the story is definitely connected to her family's secrets. When an act of violence wounds her family, she and her theater squad team up to solve the mysteries and bring her worlds together.

Visit new worlds with these beautifully written, wonderfully original new books.

No Image Available L. Timmel Duchamp is the author of the five-novel Marqssan Cycle, which was awarded a Special Honor by the 2009 James Tiptree Award jury; two collections of short fiction, Loves Body, Dancing in Time and Never At Home; the short novel The Red Rose Rages (Bleeding); and numerous uncollected stories, for which she has been a Nebula and Sturgeon Award finalist and short-listed numerous times for the Tiptree Award. She lives in Seattle.

Andrea Hairston is a Professor of Theatre and Afro-American Studies at Smith College, as well as the Artistic Director of Chrysalis Theatre. Her first novel, Mindscape, which was short-listed for the Philip K. Dick and James Tiptree Awards, was awarded the Carl Brandon Societys Parallax Award, while her next novel, Redwood and Wildfire was awarded the James Tiptree as well as the Carl Brandon Society's Kindred Award. Her plays have been produced at Yale Rep, Rites and Reason, the Kennedy Center, Stage West, and on Public Radio and Television. She has received many awards for her dramatic writing and directing, including NEA and Ford Foundation grants.