Us in Flux: Conversations—Regina Kanyu Wang and Athena Aktipis [Video–Past Event]


Event Details


Us in Flux: Conversations – Memes, Symbiosis, and the Microbiome

Us in Flux is a new series of short stories and virtual gatherings that explore themes of community, collaboration, and collective imagination in response to transformative events. Twice a month, we publish a new, original piece of flash fiction followed by a virtual chat with the author and their special guests.

In this conversation, we’ll chat with science fiction author and SF AppleCore co-founder Regina Kanyu Wang, whose work is recognized in the Chinese Nebula Awards, and Athena Aktipis, Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University and co-Director of The Human Generosity Project, about Regina’s story “A Cyber-Cuscuta Manifesto.”

Us in Flux is a new series of short stories and virtual gatherings that explore themes of community, collaboration, and collective imagination in response to transformative events. Every other Thursday, we’ll publish a new, original piece of flash fiction, and then host an interactive chat with the author and a special guest the following Monday at 4:00 pm Eastern.

About the Speakers

Regina Kanyu Wang is a bilingual writer from Shanghai who writes both in Chinese and English, graduate of Fudan University’s MFA program, member of Shanghai Writers’ Association, Shanghai Popular Science Writers’ Association, World Chinese Science Fiction Association, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association of America. She has won SF Comet international short story competition and multiple Xingyun Awards for Global Chinese SF. Her stories can be found in Harvest, Mengya, Shanghai Literature, Hong Kong Literature, West Late, Flower City, Fiction World, Science Fiction World, Southern People Weekly, Galaxy’s Edge, and various anthologies in China, UK, US and Canada.

Athena Aktipis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University. She studies cooperation across systems from human sharing to cancer. She is also the chair of the Zombie Apocalypse Medicine Meeting; host of the new podcast, Zombified and author of the book The Cheating Cell: How evolution helps us understand and treat cancer from Princeton University Press.