Hello Party People!
What a terrible year it has been, and thus what a strange year to be reporting good news. Yet here I am, in your inbox, with good news.
Public Recognition
I was featured by Vice Motherboard as a Human of 2020 and selected by Nature as one of Nature’s 10 People Who Shaped Science in 2020. I was surprised and thankful to be included in these groups after spending the better part of two decades working on issues of equity and justice and often having my contributions erased, challenged, or attacked. Of course, all of my successes are made possible by the people who pour into the streets and sustain grassroots organizing in the long term.
Book Updates
First, The Disordered Cosmos has a UK release date: you can get it from your favorite bookseller on April 15, and yes, you can preorder at most of them— although WH Smith, which was my local store in London as a kid, is slow to update their site, wah wah. People in the US can of course preorder pretty much everywhere now, and so can Canadians.
I finalized the bookstore partners and conversation partners for my small virtual book tour, and I’m very excited about who and where. Stay tuned to this newsletter for future updates on that front. Also if your organization would like to do a private book event with me, be in touch with my publicist at Jocelynn.Pedro@hbgusa.com.
Finally, I turned in my last round of corrections today and the book goes to the printer in a few weeks ahhhh!
Writing Updates
My column at New Scientist continues, so I hope you’re subscribing and reading. In October, I had a piece for #BlackInPhysics week appear simultaneously in Physics Today and Physics World. In it, I argue that working for the military may pay the bills, but it is inconsistent with the fight for Black lives. The following week, my first column as a contributing columnist at Physics World appeared. I discuss the challenges of being a Black scientist in a piece that I pitched before I was asked to write the #BlackinPhysics piece.
My graduate student and I also posted a new paper to the arXiv, and it is now being peer reviewed at Physical Review D. I guess also it counts as a writing update that I won a grant from FQXi to start my Cite Black Women+ in Physics bibliography project. I’m excited to move forward with that project.
In the end
There isn’t a cover large enough to cover the stain of white supremacist ableist heterocispatriarchy and the 300,000+ dead. As Mother Jones urged us, let us mourn or the dead and fight like hell for the living in 2021.
Happy New Year! Stay safe, stay socially distanced, and stay in solidarity with the most vulnerable because when they win, we all win. Remember that the vaccines protect you, but they don’t necessarily stop you from being a COVID carrier and spreader.
Chanda
