Scientist, Artiste, Hoodoo Conjurer: Andrea Hairston on Genre, Afrofuturism, and Writing Like a Director
About this episode
Andrea Hairston discusses her journey from mathematician to playwright and novelist, exploring themes of Afrofuturism and genre in her latest work.
What happens when a mathematician becomes a playwright, then a novelist, then an Afrofuturist — and writes a murder mystery where the detective is a dog who can travel across dimensions? You get Andrea Hairston. In this episode of the Fresh Fiction Video Book Club, host Samantha Tennant talks with Andrea about her latest novel, THE REDEMPTION CENTER IS CLOSED ON SUNDAYS — an extra-dimensional murder mystery featuring alien tricksters, a Saint Bernardoodle named Una who can smell lies and cross dimensions, and a community of people navigating romance, secrets, and the physics of the unexplainable. Andrea shares how decades in theater — directing, playwriting, and teaching — shaped the way she writes fiction: show don’t tell, every prop matters, and when something unexpected shows up on your stage, make it the best part of the play. She explains why she writes the dog as a dog (not a person in a dog suit), why mystery is at the core of every dramatic story, and how the ”magic if” of science fiction gives her room to push characters somewhere they couldn’t go otherwise. The conversation also covers Afrofuturism as a present-tense practice, her lifelong parallel track between science…
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