An award-winning playwright, director, actor, and musician, as well as author, Andrea Hairston, is professor of literature/playwriting and professor of theatre at Smith. She is also the artistic director of Chrysalis Theatre in Northampton, Massachusetts. Mindscape, her first novel, published in 2006, depicts a dark future, where an extraterrestrial entity known as the Barrier has divided the world into warring zones, with power-hungry politicians, gangsters, and spiritual fundamentalists determined to thwart any chance for peace. Hairston is currently working on her second novel, Exploding in Slow Motion, for which she received a grant from the Speculative Literature Foundation. She lives in Florence, Massachusetts.