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Okay this is a totally off topic question but do you

refrigerate strawberries?

No right? Like they don't refrigerate them at the store, do they?

From WBEZ Chicago, this is the Nerd at Book Club. I'm Greta Johnson, and as you may know know the way Book Club works is we've been choosing a book each month and talking about it with a rotating panel of awesome humans and sometimes the author even shows up.

Our May book is The City We Became by N. K. Jemison

and the panel discussion is still happening later this month,

two weeks from today in fact, but today we're going to bring you

a conversation I had with Nora earlier this week for WBEZ event that took place on the interwebs. So as you may already know, Nora, also known as N K

Jemison, is the author of a bunch of speculative fiction novels and trilogies and

short stories. Her series, The Earth trilogy won three Hugo awards in a row which if you don't know what a Hugo

award is just know it's a big fucking deal. So as I mentioned the first book in her new trilogy is out now it is our May book pick

it's called the city we became and if you haven't read it yet that is totally

okay for the sake of this episode.

This is actually a spoiler-free conversation

that you're about to hear.

And if you're wondering what the book is even about,

I'm just gonna let Nora tell you. So it's set in the real world, set in New York City of right now, and in the mythology of the story for reasons that become clear over the course of time.

Cities when they reach a kind of certain point of development

become alive.

...