The Ivy Bookshop and the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance are excited to launch a new conversation series that pairs artists and writers whose work overlaps in a unique way. Join us for a lively conversation between astronomer Lucianne Walkowicz and architect Fred Scharmen as they discuss issues surrounding public space planning, planetary systems, science fiction, and the possibility of life beyond our planet.

Lucianne Walkowicz is an astrophysicist and multimedia artist. Her work delves into a question both scientific, and fundamentally human: what is the nature of life in the universe? In passionate and electrifying talks, Walkowicz sheds light on how the thousands of newly discovered planetary systems might lead to the discovery of life beyond planet Earth, and how the future of our home world depends on our personal connection to science.

Fred Scharmen is an architect and assistant professor at Morgan State University. His recent research investigates the history of proposals to create new public space in outer space. His work links the depictions of space in science fiction with more realistic future-forward proposals in architecture on Earth. Examining and critiquing these projects—fictional and real—in terms of who they are for has opened up new ways to look at the future worlds and cities we make, on Earth and potentially elsewhere. Scharmen is currently working on a book, Space Settlements, which will examine the outcomes of this design project and look at the contexts that surround them: the end of the Space Race, the beginning of the Energy Crisis, the ongoing countercultural and Civil Rights movements, and the pop culture of science fiction.