"This is also me saying here's a literary reading of the universe through physics. There's a way you can read The Edge of Space-Time as me doing close-reading for a few 100 pages. I'm close-reading equations. I'm close-reading Dirac. I'm close-reading Hawking and Ellis, but it's all different versions of a literary practice," says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, author of The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie (Pantheon Books).

Coming at you at the speed of sound, CNFers, with Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, who is the author of The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred and her latest book The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie. It’s published by Pantheon Books.

She is an associate professor of physics and core faculty member in women’s and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire. Her work lives at the intersection of particle physics, cosmology, and astrophysics and she’s also a theorist of Black feminist science studies.

Her book is accessible, for sure, but it’s mind-bendy and it strikes me as the kind of book you want to read twice. One, it’s good company, and two, the material she translates is really difficult to get your head around, but that’s the nature of the quantum mechanics, and general relativity, and particle physics, and how the hell did we get here in the first place? Gah!

So Chanda talks about:

The publishing business in conversations she had with CNF Pod alum Keith O’Brien
Writing for Black and queer audiences
The different selves who approach the page
Paying attention to acknowledgements
Epigraph rights and how they set the vibe
The fork in the road researchers face when they write a pop science book
Physicist brain
A literary reading of the universe
The world keeps happening while you’re writing
Understanding metaphors
And what Newton and Einstein might talk about if they sat down at a bar together

Be sure you visit Chanda’s website chanda.science and follow her on Instagram at chanda.prescod.weinstein.

This episode will pair well with:

Episode 103: Persistent, Constant, Careful Work with Dennis Overbye
Episode 111: The Empowering and Exciting Nature of Film with Emer Reynolds
Episode 307: Greg Brennecka
Episode 334: Katrina Miller
Episode 395: “The Six,” Mini-Deadlines and the Twang with Loren Grush

Episode 526: Chanda Prescod-Weinstein's Literary Reading of the Universe

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O'Meara

Episode 526: Chanda Prescod-Weinstein's Literary Reading of the Universe