Life on Other Planets: A Memoir of Finding My Place in the Universe

Astronomer Shields chronicles her trials and triumphs as a scientist, actor, and Black woman in her luminous debut. Obsessed with the stars as a child in New Hampshire (“I was always looking up. So much so that I often bumped into things”), Shields applied to Phillips Exeter Academy after learning that the school operated its own observatory. Once there, she also fell in love with performing and began the lifelong process of balancing her two passions. “I believed in the beauty of the universe, and in the power of a story well told through its characters. That was the common thread: story,” Shields writes. As she pursued an MFA in acting from UCLA and a PhD in astronomy and astrobiology from the University of Washington, she faced down (mostly white, mostly male) professors who took her love of the arts as a sign that she couldn’t hack it as a serious scientist. Her account of proving them wrong and thriving as the sole Black woman in her PhD cohort before becoming an astronomy professor at UC, Irvine is stirring and inspirational. This will resonate with dreamers of all stripes. Agent: John Maas, Park & Fine. (June)