Join us for a story that starts inside a Pasadena coffee shop, as a free-spirited artist model and a reserved astrobiologist entangle themselves in conversation...and the fabric of reality.
Forced to share a table, strangers Nancy and Spencer can't help but talk to each other, leading to a debate over the pros and cons of scientific objectivity and artistic value. While their philosophical differences are immediately apparent, they eventually discover that they have a common preoccupation: the mysteries of the universe.
Each tries convincing the other that their own view is superior, but their discussion generates more questions than answers as a complicated bond forms between them--or perhaps it is just their ensnarling line of inquiry?
With a tip of the private investigator's hat and a nod to Rom-Coms, along with a dash of Iranian mysticism, Free Nancy Esting celebrates the lives of two Southern California denizens-- turning common stereotypes upside down with the exhilarating fact of our complicated (and yet very simple) existence.
Fred Beshid is a novelist, artist, curator and filmmaker. He is the creator of the award-winning Museum of Fred, an online museum featuring his collection of thrift store paintings, and author of Hero Pizza. He was born and raised in Los Angeles, California.
Belinda Huijuan Tang is the author of A Map for the Missing, long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and one of NPR's best books of 2022. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow and recipient of the Michener-Copernicus Fellowship. She holds a BA from Stanford University and lived in China from 2016 to 2018 where she received an MA from Peking University in Beijing. She currently lives in Los Angeles.
