EPISODE · Jun 23, 2026 · 47 MIN
Scientist, Artiste, Hoodoo Conjurer: Andrea Hairston on Genre, Afrofuturism, and Writing Like a Director
from The Fresh Fiction Podcast · host Fresh Fiction Media
Samantha Tennant sits down with Andrea Hairston — novelist, playwright, Afrofuturist, and self-described "scientist, artiste, and hoodoo conjurer" — to talk about her latest novel, THE REDEMPTION CENTER IS CLOSED ON SUNDAYS, a genre-defying extra-dimensional murder mystery anchored by a Saint Bernardoodle dog detective named Una. Andrea draws on her decades in theater — as director, playwright, and professor — to explain how she weaves mystery, romance, and science fiction into a single story without losing the thread of any of them. She talks about using the dog as a pivot point: Una doesn't recognize genre, she just knows the people she loves, which turns out to be the perfect lens for a story that spans dimensions. The conversation moves into Andrea's background shift from mathematics and physics to theater (with a detour through lighting design and Ohm's Law), her long-standing research into animal cognition and dog behavior, and what Afrofuturism actually means in practice — not predicting the future, but understanding the present deeply enough to make real choices about what comes next. She uses Harriet Tubman and Einstein as parallel examples of people who imagined their way to something that didn't exist yet. The Fresh Fiction Facts segment reveals she owns a "ridiculous" number of DVDs (including every Star Trek series), that she'd rather visit the future than the past, and that her most dog-eared books are Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, anything by Ursula Le Guin, and Momo by Michael Ende — which she re-reads in German. Andrea closes with a peek at her work-in-progress: QUEEN FOR TODAY, a secondary world fantasy about a carnival queen of misrule whose single day of reign changes everything.
Embed this episode
What this episode covers
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 and art, the DVDs she’ll one day donate to a library, and her current work-in-progress — a secondary world fantasy about a queen of misrule whose single day of power changes everything. Subscribe to the Fresh Fiction newsletter for weekly new-book picks, author interviews, and reader events: freshfiction.com/newsletters.php
NOW PLAYING
Scientist, Artiste, Hoodoo Conjurer: Andrea Hairston on Genre, Afrofuturism, and Writing Like a Director
No transcript for this episode yet
Similar Episodes
No similar episodes found.
Similar Podcasts
No similar podcasts found.