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ARB has been offered a review copy of Andrea Hairston‘s novel Redwood and Wildfire (Tordotcom).
If you are interested in reviewing this book for ARB, please reach out to the editors using the form below to express your interest.
From the publisher:
From award-winning author and acclaimed playwright, Andrea Hairston, comes the adventurous and poignant novel, and the recipient of the Otherwise Award and the Carl Brandon Kindred Award, Redwood and Wildfire (Tordotcom Publishing, February 1, 2022). Hairston has proven she is a talent to behold with her stunning and original work, Master of Poisons, an Amazon SFF Best of the Month & Best of 2020 Kirkus Pick and Will Do Magic for Small Change. Now, readers can discover Hairston’s powerful alternate history fantasy, set in a world of blues singers, filmmakers, haints, healers, romance and magic.
Redwood and Wildfire takes place at the turn of the 20th century in an alternate American South, minstrel shows transform into vaudeville, which slides into moving pictures. Hunkering together in dark theaters, diverse audiences marvel at flickering images. Redwood, an African American woman, and Aidan, a Seminole Irish man, form a fast friendship and journey from Georgia to Chicago, from haunted swampland to a “city of the future,” in search of a place they feel safe. They are gifted performers and hoodoo conjurors, struggling to call up the wondrous world they imagine, not just on stage and screen, but on city streets, in front parlors, in wounded hearts. The power of hoodoo is the power of the community that believes in its capacities to heal. Living in a system stacked against them, Redwood and Aidan’s power and talent are torment and joy. Hairston’s story follows Redwood and Aidan’s coming-of-age journey and their search for a place to simply be who they want to be. Redwood and Wildfire is an exhilarating, painful, and magical adventure that manages to feel both fantastical and familiar.
About the author:
Andrea Hairston is a novelist, essayist, playwright, and the Artistic Director of Chrysalis Theatre. She is the author of Redwood and Wildfire, winner of the 2011 Otherwise Award and the Carl Brandon Kindred Award, and Mindscape, shortlisted for the Phillip K Dick and Otherwise Awards, and winner of the Carl Brandon Parallax Award. In her spare time, she is the Louise Wolff Kahn 1931 Professor of Theatre and Afro-American Studies at Smith College. She has received the International Association of the Fantastic in the Arts Distinguished Scholarship Award for outstanding contributions to the criticism of the fantastic. She bikes at night year-round, meeting bears, and the occasional shooting star.
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