I, of course, understand the timely nature of reproductive rights which must have been one of the inspirations behind the formation of both of your CRISPR stories. But I also wanted to know if there were any stakes (personal or political) that you wanted to bring about more through these pieces.

People of all genders can become pregnant, and the purpose of these stories is to empower them to do whatever they want with that. I want those people to know: the ones trying to take your reproductive rights away are lying. They don’t give a shit about hypothetical children. They don’t give a shit about you. They want bodily control of you, nothing more and nothing less. They don’t have control over you. They’re afraid of the worlds we can create and for good reason, because those worlds have absolutely no place for them.

The form of both these pieces is unique to each story as well as interconnected. What made you finally take the form of recipe-cum-experiment-cum-instruction manual format to present this story?

My goal was to make these stories as realistic as possible to show that futures where we fight for our reproductive rights are just as close as futures where they’re taken away. Biology is a wonderful, liberating science which has sadly been twisted to oppress others for too long. I want readers to see the true biology—the biology that could empower people to write their own futures in their DNA. If readers have been intrigued by these stories, I encourage them to engage with the biological sciences in the real world, whether that’s in a farming co-op, community college class, or even a DIY biology group.

As a writer, I am always interested in what inspires another writer to write the story they did and the kind of work that goes into crafting a story. I am really interested in hearing more about the kind of research you did in order to get some of the science together. Was it challenging or comfortable?

I’m a working scientist doing biological research. There is some overlap in my day-to-day work and the science of these stories, so doing the research to write them was a familiar, cathartic, and supremely challenging experience at the same time. I have to be vague now, but I hope there’ll come a time when I can share that in more detail. For now I’ll use this space to encourage my fellow scientists as well: Think about the ways you’ve been trained to use your science and the systems they support. Science fiction can be an amazing way to speculate how your science could be used to change things.

On a broader level, do you think your stories can be categorized as satire?

Only as much as the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe and the efforts of certain groups and judges to ban birth control and so on and so on can be considered satire :)

Lastly, are you hoping to expand further on this idea?

I’m not hoping for a future where it will be necessary to write more of these “recipes” but part of me feels like they’ll keep coming.