Nancy Atkinson's Blog - Posts Tagged "books"

Although I’m still a bit groggy after taking a red-eye flight home, I’ve been completely energized by my experiences this past weekend at the Tucson Festival of Books. What an amazing event and an incredible experience! Powered by over 2,000 volunteers, 350 participating authors and over 130,000 visitors, this Festival celebrates our love of books and stories, and I’m so grateful to have had the chance to be part of it.

From the moment I stepped onto the Mall area at the University of Arizona, I was blown away by the size and diversity of this event, which is the third largest book festival in the US. Plus, the people-watching was great, with lots of interesting — and famous — people and ‘characters!’

The two events I participated in were panel session discussions, and again, both were wonderful experiences. On Saturday, the session was titled “Incredible Stories From Space” (I was really excited they used the title of my book!) and Kristin Block from the HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission and I talked about various robotic missions going on in solar system and beyond and the importance of exploration. While I interviewed Kristin for my book, this is the first time we had met in person. Getting to know her was really great, as she is really a wonderful person and engineer. The moderator for our panel was professor, astronomer and author Chris Impey.

For the session on Sunday, I moderated a panel called “Women Writing About Women in Science,” and again teamed up with Kristin Block, as well as two incredible authors: Nathalia Holt, who wrote “Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us from Missiles to the Moon to Mars,” a New York Times Best Seller about the women who served as human computers for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Julian Guthrie, author of “How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight,” which tells the compelling story of the Ansari XPRIZE to spur commercial spaceflight.

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