Episode 563-With Andrea Hairston

The Functional Nerds Podcast

This week, Patrick and Tracy welcome back Andrea Hairston, author of WILL DO MAGIC FOR SMALL CHANGE.

About WILL DO MAGIC FOR SMALL CHANGE: Cinnamon Jones dreams of stepping on stage and acting her heart out like her famous grandparents, Redwood and Wildfire. But she’s always been theatrically challenged. That won’t necessarily stop her! But her family life is a tangle of mysteries and secrets, and nobody is telling her the whole truth.

Before her brother died, he gave Cinnamon The Chronicles of the Great Wanderer—a tale of a Dahomean warrior woman and an alien from another dimension who perform at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. They are a story of magic or alien science, but the connection to Cinnamon’s past is unmistakable.

When an act of violence wounds her family, Cinnamon and her theatre squad determine to solve the mysteries and bring her worlds crashing together.

About Andrea Hairston: Andrea Hairston is a novelist, playwright, and scholar. Aqueduct Press published: Will Do Magic For Small Change, a New York Times Editor’s pick and finalist for the Mythopoeic, Lambda, and Otherwise Awards; Mindscape, winner of the Carl Brandon Award; and Lonely Stardust, a collection of essays and plays. Her play, Thunderbird at the Next World Theatre, appears in Geek Theater. A novelette, “Saltwater Railroad,” was published by Lightspeed Magazine. “Dumb House,” a short story appears in New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color edited by Nisi Shawl. Andrea received the International Association of the Fantastic in the Arts Distinguished Scholarship Award in 2011 and has gotten grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her latest novel, Master of Poisons, came out from Tordotcom Publishing and is on the Kirkus Review’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2020. “Seven Generations Algorithm,” a short story is in Trouble the Waters edited by Sheree Renee Thomas, and Pan Morigan. Redwood and Wildfire, winner of the Otherwise and Carl Brandon Awards, will be out February 1, 2022 from Tordotcom. In her spare time, Andrea is the Louise Wolff Kahn 1931 Professor of Theatre and Africana Studies at Smith College and the Artistic Director of Chrysalis Theatre.

This week’s picks:

• Andrea: Ballad & Dagger (An Outlaw Saints Novel) by Daniel José Older
• Tracy: Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
• Patrick: Unsolved Mysteries Volume 3 (Netflix)

Links:

• Andrea Hairston on Twitter
• Tracy Townsend on Twitter
• Patrick Hester on Twitter
• The Functional Nerds Patreon Page

© 2022 Patrick Hester

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