“Making an impressive nonfiction debut, award-winning fiction writer Chapela brings the perspective of a poet to three lyric essays that probe the act of seeing and the challenge of communicating what is perceived. (...) Philosophical meditations graced by radiant prose.”

“Above all else, this essay is about the hidden transformations that surround us. It talks about glass (meaning what allows us to see), mirrors (meaning what allows us to see ourselves), and light (the vehicle for sight and the metaphor for truth, understood as the illumination of knowledge). Her method is exchanging lyrical doubt with personal experimentation, allowing knowledge to become a metaphor and everyday experiences to mark the course of curiosity.”

“Art and science definitely mix—don’t let anyone tell you otherwise...Many of the essays are experimental in form, so get ready for a challenging, thought-provoking tumble into the mysteries of the human heart and the physical world.”

“The Visible Unseen is a wonderful category-defying book. Andrea Chapela writes with mathematical elegance, poetical precision, and wit. Her intimate family vignettes blend with a Borgesian knowledge and regard for science. This lucid, beautiful book is an experiment where one eye sees with the vision of a philosopher and the other sees with the vision of a physicist, a biologist, and a chemist. The Visible Unseen is a lyrical laboratory of thinking and feeling. It’s an uncanny memoir of inner and outer perceptions.”

“Andrea Chapela lends us her eyes—the clear, intimate gaze of a chemist and writer—to help us delve into the matter that we are made of and the mysteries surrounding us. Literature and science merge in the substance of these essays—these wise, beautiful, soulful, astonishing experiments.”

“Andrea reflects on the nature of glass, mirrors, and lights without letting reason compete with metaphors—they both flow freely between anecdotes, hard facts that come and go, and simple experiments that at times reveal more about the author’s intimacy than about the order of particles.
(...)
Language is the filter through which the paths of both science and literature cross, and in each one she accepts at least two approaches: a way of giving order to chaos, or a series of statements carved in stone that must be broken down and reconstructed. Despite their formal differences, there’s always a point where, in order to translate their discoveries, scientists resort to similes. Therefore, the words selected to deliver their discovery are as relevant as those in a poem. (...) Perhaps the easiest thing is to amplify the metaphor and say that Andrea Chapela, like light, possesses a dual nature that in her case is torn between science and literature. Perhaps we should all lean into it a little in order to better understand the beauty that surrounds us, now that we need it so much.”