Fantasy Meets African Folktales
Smithies Create
Published July 16, 2021
Andrea Hairston ’74 is not only the Louise Wolff Kahn Professor of Theatre and a professor of Africana studies at Smith, she is also an award-winning science fiction and fantasy playwright and novelist.
In her latest book, Master of Poisons, Hairston weaves African folktales with apocalyptic fantasy to create a complex, epic adventure of a dying world and those who would try to save it. In starred reviews, Publishers Weekly calls Master of Poisons “an urgent, gorgeous work,” and Kirkus, which named it a best book of 2020, writes, “This book’s lyrical language and unsparing vision make it a mind-expanding must-read.”
MASTER OF POISONS
Andrea Hairston ’74
Tordotcom, September 2020
This story appears as part of the Smithies Create column in the Summer 2021 issue of the Smith Alumnae Quarterly.
Photograph by Jim Gipe