The world is changing. Poison desert eats good farmland. Once-sweet water turns foul. The wind blows sand and sadness across the Empire. To get caught in a storm is death. To live and do nothing is death. There is magic in the world, but good conjure is hard to find. Djola, righthand man and spymaster of the lord of the Arkhysian Empire, is desperately trying to save his adopted homeland, even in exile. Awa, a young woman training to be a powerful griot, tests the limits of her knowledge and comes into her own in a world of sorcery, floating cities, kindly beasts, and uncertain men.Awash in the rhythms of folklore and storytelling and rich with Hairston's characteristic lush prose, Master of Poisons is epic fantasy that will bleed your mind with its turns of phrase and leave you aching for the world it burns into being.

Master of Poisons

Literature & Fiction

Hairston, Andrea

United States

Tor Books

About the Author\nAndrea 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.\n“This is a prayer hymn, a battle cry, a love song, a legendary call and response bonfire talisman tale. This is medicine for a broken world." ―Daniel José Older\nAward-winning author Andrea Hairston weaves together African folktales and postcolonial literature into unforgettable fantasy in Master of Poisons\nNEW MATERIAL FOR A NEW EDITION! 
This trade paperback includes an extensive, conversational interview between the author and Daniel José Older!\nThe world is changing. Poison desert eats good farmland. Once-sweet water turns foul. The wind blows sand and sadness across the Empire. To get caught in a storm is death. To live and do nothing is death. There is magic in the world, but good conjure is hard to find.\nDjola, righthand man and spymaster of the lord of the Arkhysian Empire, is desperately trying to save his adopted homeland, even in exile.\nAwa, a young woman training to be a powerful griot, tests the limits of her knowledge and comes into her own in a world of sorcery, floating cities, kindly beasts, and uncertain men.\nAwash in the rhythms of folklore and storytelling and rich with Hairston's characteristic lush prose, Master of Poisons is epic fantasy that will bleed your mind with its turns of phrase and leave you aching for the world it burns into being.

Run from your past. Hide from your future. Protect your present. The Water Wars have scrambled the world. Flood refugees are on the run. Disrupters and the nostalgia militia roam the roads wreaking havoc. Invisible Darknet Lords troll the internet, solidifying their power, while Cinnamon, her three Circus-Bots, and two dogs work with a community of farmers, Motor Fairies, and Wheel-Wizards to provide housing, health care and education for flood refugees. As Cinnamon confronts threats from the Darknet Lords and the nostalgia militia, she must determine how best to honor her elders and her history while building a future for herself and her charges. It's not going to be easy. Praise for Archangels of Funk: "Andrea Hairston creates original, layered, complex worlds that are a treat to explore, but what I love most is the people she creates for them. Archangels of Funk is brimming with characters who face adversity with love, hope, art, stories, history, and their bonds with each other. It's a celebration of radiant creativity as a bulwark against despair." &#8213;Martha Wells, author of the Murderbot Diaries

Archangels of Funk

Tordotcom

Redwood and Wildfire

About the Author\nAndrea 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.\nAndrea Hairston's alternate history adventure, Redwood and Wildfire, is the winner of the Otherwise Award and the Carl Brandon Kindred Award.\nAt the turn of the 20th century, minstrel shows transform into vaudeville, which slides into moving pictures. Hunkering together in dark theatres, diverse audiences marvel at flickering images.\nRedwood, an African American woman, and Aidan, a Seminole Irish man, journey from Georgia to Chicago, from haunted swampland to a "city of the future." 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.\nLiving in a system stacked against them, Redwood and Aidan's power and talent are torment and joy. Their search for a place to be who they want to be is an exhilarating, painful, magical adventure.

Will Do Magic for Small Change

About the Author\nAndrea 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.\n“[A] beautifully multifaceted story... Highly recommended.” ―The New York Times\nAndrea Hairston's historical fantasy Will Do Magic for Small Change presents a tale of alien science and earthbound magic and the secrets families keep from each other.\nCinnamon 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.\nBefore 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.\nWhen an act of violence wounds her family, Cinnamon and her theatre squad determine to solve the mysteries and bring her worlds crashing together.

"[A] beautifully multifaceted story... Highly recommended." --The New York Times Andrea Hairston's historical fantasy Will Do Magic for Small Change presents a tale of alien science and earthbound magic and the secrets families keep from each other. 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.

''We need struggle and serendipity,'' Andrea Hairston recently proclaimed. ''We are cyborgs, animals incorporating our tools/technology into our bodies and altering/creating the universe we inhabit and that produces us. Story is one of our most powerful, world-changing, universe-altering technologies!''   Lonely Stardust: Two Plays, a Speech, and Eight Essays brings us the texts of nine marvelous works of scholarly performance as well as two works of drama in which the fantastic shows us the way through despair. In several of the pieces here, Hairston's sharp, visionary eye examines Hollywood blockbusters and finds a great deal to think about, even as she impatiently slices through hackneyed received views that do popular culture and its fans no favors. Taken together, these essays and plays broadcast a message of hope and intelligence that defiantly insists that our ability and desire to tell stories defines our humanity and is one of our most valuable resources.

Lonely Stardust: Two Plays, a Speech, and Eight Essays

Dramas & Plays

Aqueduct Press

Cinnamon Jones dreams of stepping on stage and acting her heart out like her famous grandparents, Redwood and Wildfire. But at 5'10'' and 180 pounds, shes theatrically challenged. Her family life is a tangle of mystery and deadly secrets, and nobody is telling Cinnamon the whole truth. Before her older 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 in Paris and at the 1893 Chicago Worlds Fair. The Chronicles may be magic or alien science, but the story is definitely connected to Cinnamon's family secrets. When an act of violence wounds her family, Cinnamon and her theatre squad determine to solve the mysteries and bring her worlds together.
 Andrea Hairston's vision is breathtaking. She weaves sweeping historical narratives and mythology with the wisdom of the elders, and shines light on the pressing issues of the day. In her hands language is a blessing, and the familiar and the fantastic become magic, one and the same.--Sheree Rene Thomas, editor of the award-winning Dark Matter anthology series.
 This is one of those books you start and realize you've been waiting to read for a long, long time without knowing. Will Do Magic for Small Change is a deep breath, a good friend, a heartbreaking, game-changing, life-affirming, truth-telling powerhouse. I love this book.--Daniel Jos Older, author of Half-Resurrection Blues and Salsa Nocturna

Aqueduct Pr

Anthology of contemporary stories by emerging and seasoned writers of many races There’s nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns,” proclaimed Octavia E Butler. New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color showcases emerging and seasoned writers of many races telling stories filled with shocking delights, powerful visions of the familiar made strange. Between this book’s covers burn tales of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and their indefinable overlappings. These are authors aware of our many possible pasts and futures, authors freed of stereotypes and clichés, ready to dazzle you with their daring genius. Unexpected brilliance shines forth from every page. Including stories by Indrapramit Das, E Lily Yu, Rebecca Roanhorse, Anil Menon, Jaymee Goh and many others. Introduction by Levar Burton.

New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color

Buckell, Tobias S.

Alcalá, Kathleen

Little Badger, Darcie

Moreno-García, Silvia

Menon, Anil

Roanhorse, Rebecca

Kang, Minsoo

Goh, Jaymee

Das, Indrapramit

Yu, E. Lily

Lowachee, Karin

Barnes, Steven

Onwual, Chinelo

Jennings, Alex

Yáñez, Alberto

Goto, Hiromi

Solaris

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hairston, Andrea. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hairston, Andrea

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hairston, Andrea. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Master of Poisons

Master of Poisons

Archangels of Funk

Redwood and Wildfire

Redwood and Wildfire

Will Do Magic for Small Change

Will Do Magic for Small Change

Lonely Stardust: Two Plays, a Speech, and Eight Essays

Will Do Magic for Small Change

New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color