
I teach science writing in the MA Science Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University and research cosmic rays for the Telescope Array Project at the University of Utah.
Before this, I was a science editor for a decade, acting as managing editor for the Brussels-based NGO Atomium Culture and as a proofreader of graduate textbooks on engineering, computer programming, optics, mathematics, statistics, and astrophysics for CRC Press, a member of the Taylor & Francis Group.
I also taught astronomy at the Pierre and Marie Curie School and the American University of Managua in Nicaragua from 2016 to 2018. I have lived in Utah, Toronto, Italy, Belgium, New York, DC, the Marshall Islands, Montreal, and Nicaragua as part of a Foreign Service family. I'm working on a nonfiction book.
Before this, I was a science editor for a decade, acting as managing editor for the Brussels-based NGO Atomium Culture and as a proofreader of graduate textbooks on engineering, computer programming, optics, mathematics, statistics, and astrophysics for CRC Press, a member of the Taylor & Francis Group.
I also taught astronomy at the Pierre and Marie Curie School and the American University of Managua in Nicaragua from 2016 to 2018. I have lived in Utah, Toronto, Italy, Belgium, New York, DC, the Marshall Islands, Montreal, and Nicaragua as part of a Foreign Service family. I'm working on a nonfiction book.
News
9/26/19 Published the Enumeration in Orion Magazine's Autumn 2019 issue called "6 Ways to Calculate a Universe in Flux."
|
2/15/19 Science article "I Fell Under the Spell of NASA's Most Notorious Thief" is published in The Atlantic.
|
1/19 I start teaching a new course I created for the Science Writing grad program at JHU. It's called Subatomic Writing, an elective that "examines writing on the particle level: sound, syntax, punctuation, rhythm, and pacing."
I made a melodramatic movie trailer to introduce myself and the course to my students. |
|
9/4/18 Flash-nonfiction piece "Walking by Dogs on a Marshallese Morning" is published on Brevity Magazine's podcast, Episode #10: One-Minute Memoirs. Starts at minute 33.
|
|
6/10/18 to 6/15/18 Attended the Orion Environmental Writer's Workshop in Rhinebeck, New York.
|
4/26/18 My son and I were evacuated from Nicaragua to a safe haven in Utah. I finished teaching my astronomy students online, although it was not easy for them. (Image of Nicaraguan police shooting at their own people taken on May 29, 2018.) One student, Marco Novoa, described in an interview how he was tortured by the Ortega administration.
|
4/12/26 I gave former Sandinista commander Dora María Téllez a copy of my essay "On the Revolution of Revolutions: Nicaraguan Women After War," which turned out to be more prophetic than I liked. The essay is now available online on the CONSEQUENCE Magazine website.
|
3/16/18 Publication of essay "Makeup of a Monster" is now available in Creative Nonfiction #66: "Dangerous Creations." It explores how beauty cosmetics parallel Boris Karloff's cosmetics in the movie Frankenstein—and what I see happening in my beautiful home state of Utah, one of the top consumers of cosmetic surgery in the nation. www.creativenonfiction.org/issue/66
|
3/8/18 At AWP Conference in Tampa, Florida, on duty at the JHU Booth. More information about the MA in Science Writing Program can be found here. Great to see Bennington College friends and other familiar faces too.
|
2/13/18 "On the Revolution of Revolutions: Nicaraguan Women After War" published for CONSEQUENCE Magazine's 10th anniversary issue. http://www.consequencemagazine.org/volumes/volume-10-anniversary-issue-spring-2018/
|
|
10/13/17 Magazine event launch at the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine in Washington, D.C., to celebrate the publication of a collaborative Science & Religion issue. "Shuddering Before the Beautiful" essay won the $5,000 runner-up prize and can be found in both Creative Nonfiction Magazine and Issues in Science & Technology.
|
8/28/17 Started teaching the Prizewinners course at Johns Hopkins University. Find more information on the Science Writing Master's Program at JHU here. Will be teaching the Science-Medical Writing Workshop Spring 2018 semester.
|
5/8/17 Interviewed Comandante Dora María Téllez. Essay forthcoming in CONSEQUENCE Magazine.
|
10/24/16 "Landscape with Broken Fire Hydrant: An Interview with Jamie Zvirzdin" published by MFA Day Job.
|
9/6/16 "Observations of a Science Editor: If Romantic Scientists Pilfered Fiction's Toolbox, So Can You" published by The Kenyon Review as part of a special discussion on "The Poetics of Science." Responses to the essay from scientists, writers, and editors will be posted throughout September and October.
|