Writers after Dark

The mingling of arts and sciences is familiar territory for Madhur Anand. In her memoir, This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart, which won the Governor General’s Literary Award for non-fiction in 2020, the poet and professor drew on her knowledge of environmental science to anchor her memories of growing up in Canada as a daughter of Indian immigrants. “When scientists discovered the adaptive significance of ear tufts in owls,” she wrote, “I cut my first bangs and entered grade five.” Published in 2022, her most recent collection of poems, Parasitic Oscillations, juxtaposed ecological and emotional upheavals. In keeping with her exploration of creativity, analysis, and the space between, her debut novel follows an unnamed scientist in her mid-fifties who, while on a press junket for her popular science book, gets a chance to realize her private desire to work with fiction.

Much of To Place a Rabbit unfolds at literary festivals, as...