I gave the source and positioning of this post a lot more thought than i usually do; it's a weird one.
bookofjoe harvests content and posts from many sources, he's one of the many people contributing to the inbound firehose of links and stories.
Not sure how or why this got bumped to the top ten; maybe people see "sci fi" and/or "ivory tower" and a piece of content will get engagement? TBH it reads a little like a publisher's fluff piece, or a writing assignment given to a high schooler.
Some of the commentary is enlightening - she says "Writing fiction is about telling stories and it’s about people and human interaction" This is something you learn when Shakespeare is brought out in elementary school. This is something you should learn if you pay the slightest bit of attention to the stories you read, if the authors are N. K. Jemisin, Ursula K. Le Guin and Becky Chambers, Dan Simmons, and Ray Bradbury, who she mentions in the article.
Any good author writes stories about people; the great ones tap into our expectations and take us for a ride, bringing us to unexpected insight, or opening our eyes to a new constellation of human variables. The authors she mentions are almost universally well known for insight into what makes people tick.
This seems like an aspirational fluff piece intended to market the non-fiction book and land the author an advance so she can write fiction. This isn't intended as a criticism; god knows we can all use whatever we can get. She's apparently in a position with connections that allowed her to get such an article published about her; maybe one of her friends is a publisher or editor, or author? Whatever it is, she hasn't written her fiction book yet, so maybe she needs a breakout of some sort.
This is one of the weirdest pieces of content I've seen land on the front page, almost like a personal blog leak or something. I hope she gets a huge boost and gets to chase her dream.