Let's get to the interview! NOAF: On a Tor.com post announcing the book, you talked about how you 'wanted to write myself out of hopelessness we feel facing devastation'. She was able to take some time out of her schedule to answer many of them.

To learn more about Hairston's fiction, essays, and stage work, you can visit her website at, and follow her on twitter at learning about Master of Poisons, I had about a million questions for Hairston, from her inspirations for this novel, to her worldbuilding methods, how music and language plays into her storytelling, to her work on the stage. Not one to limit her artistic endeavors to just ink on a page, Hairston is a playwright and Artistic Director of the Chrysalis Theatre in Western Massachusetts, which has produced everything from scifi comedies to musical workshops, to radio shows and more. I want to bring the wisdom of recovered ancestors into conversation with the future.' This is a book about the stories we tell and the communities we make to do the impossible.I am an Afro-Futurist in league with Indigenous-Futurists. I wanted to write myself out of the hopelessness we feel facing devastation. 'Master of Poisons is about denial and the empire of lies we’re willing to believe. Of her newest novel, Master of Poisons, Hairston says: Hairston's previous novels include Will Do Magic for Small Change (finalist for the Mythopoeic, Lambda, and Tiptree Awards), Redwood and Wildfire, (winner of the Tiptree and Carl Brandon Awards) and Mindscape. But, if we don't have land to live on, land to farm to feed ourselves, then what? Come for the 'save the farmland!' basics, and stay for the fact that this book pulls together research and stories that the author has been collecting for her entire adult life. With its sorcery, floating cities, empires on the edge of collapse, powerful storytelling and deadly storms, Master of Poisons is obviously about much more than protecting the land. Anything that harms the land and the water, that harms how we feed ourselves, thems fightin' words. And we're pretty protective of our farm land and fresh water sources around here. Something to know about me is that I live in a college town that is surrounded by farm land. When I started seeing promotional material for Andrea Hairson's Master of Poisons, there was a turn of phrase that caught my eye: 'Poison desert eats good farmland'.

Andrea hairston master of poisons