| Description | Join the University Book Store for a virtual evening with author Cecilia Aragon, in conversation with author Jan Redford. This is a live Zoom event, with a Q+A following the conversation. Free registration through the "Register" button is required to join this event. We will email you the Zoom access code 2 hours before the event. If you register within two hours of the event or during the event itself, you will receive a Zoom code in a few minutes. The daughter of a Chilean father and a Filipina mother, Cecilia Rodriguez Aragon grew up as a shy, timid child in a small midwestern town during the 1960s. Targeted by school bullies and dismissed by many of her teachers, she worried that people would find out the truth: that she was INTF. Incompetent. Nerd. Terrified. Failure. This feeling stayed with her well into her twenties when she was told that “girls can’t do science” or “women just don’t know how to handle machines.” Yet in the span of just six years, Cecilia became the first Latina pilot to secure a place on the United States Unlimited Aerobatic Team and earn the right to represent her country at the Olympics of aviation, the World Aerobatic Championships. How did she do it? Using mathematical techniques to overcome her fear, Cecilia performed at air shows in front of millions of people. She jumped out of airplanes and taught others how to fly. She learned how to fund-raise and earn money to compete at the world level. She worked as a test pilot and contributed to the design of experimental airplanes, crafting curves of metal and fabric that shaped air to lift inanimate objects high above the earth. And best of all, she surprised everyone by overcoming the prejudices people held about her because of her race and her gender.
Flying Free is the story of how Cecilia Aragon broke free from expectations and rose above her own limits by combining math and logic with her passion for flying in unexpected ways. You don’t have to be a math whiz or a science geek to learn from her story. You just have to want to soar. CECILIA ARAGON is an author, air-show pilot, and the first Latina full professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle. She coauthored Writers in the Secret Garden, has worked with Nobel Prize winners, taught astronauts to fly, and created musical simulations of the universe with rock stars. Her major awards for research, and a stint at NASA designing software for Mars missions, led President Obama to call her “one of the top scientists and engineers in the country." For more information, visit: ceciliaaragonauthor.com. JAN REDFORD is the author of the memoir, End of the Rope: Mountains, Marriage, and Motherhood (Counterpoint Press/2018) and lives with her family in Squamish, British Columbia, where she mountain bikes, trail runs, climbs, and skis. Her stories, articles, and personal essays have been published in The Globe and Mail, National Post, Mountain Life, Explore and various anthologies. |
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