Writer. Author. Scientist.
Curious Conversationalist.
I love to write and have one-on-one conversations with people. Many of my casual conversations, not meant to be “interviews,” end up with the other person saying to me, “I can’t believe I am telling you all of this!”
I’m genuinely curious about other people — I want to know what someone is thinking, why they did this or that thing, what makes them tick, and people tend to open up to me. This is even more fun when those people are scientists and I can help tell their story to a wider audience than they may have reached otherwise.
When I’m writing fiction, a solitary experience, I love punctuating the hours alone with conversations with experts on topics I need to understand more about, like crime scenes and clinical trials, for some recent examples.
What Do You Write?
I write about science and scientists, and about a lot of other things, too. I write about what I see and experience and about what moves me. I write short and long articles, stories, essays, songs, and poems. I hope to soon add “books” to this list. I write in my journal everyday, something as essential to me as brushing my teeth or a drinking a cup of coffee.
What's New?
August 4, 2023
I have started a monthly Prose Night at Manor Mill, a beautifully renovated mill in Monkton, MD dating from the 1740s. This event brings writers and lovers of writing together for a reading by a featured author, a conversation with the author, and an open mic where audience members can read their work. Manor Mill Prose Night celebrates the work of both established and new writers in a casual and welcoming setting.
The event link is here: https://manor-mill.com/prose
I wrote a press release about a paper published on June 26 in Nature Neuroscience about the connection between the microbiome and autism. The press release can be found here:
I wrote two articles that appear in the Simons Foundation 2022 Annual Report.
One is about a Machine Learning Summer School, a summer program created by the Simons Foundation to teach students computational machine learning geared toward solving scientific problems.
The other piece is about the New York Structural Biology Center (NYSBC), a space for cutting-edge biological research that nine member institutions in New York share access to. The NYSBC has been critical in maintaining New York as a leader in research since the center’s inception twenty years ago.
The Latest:
Conversations
Conversation with Marian Riedy – August Manor Mill Prose Night featured author
August 21, 2023
Marian Riedy — Kansas native, retired Washington D.C. litigator and now author of legal thrillers — joined us for the August Manor Mill Prose Night as our featured author. She read from her second novel, Surprise Witness, and talked with the audience about her writing process.
Science Articles
NEW YORK STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY CENTER DRAWS SCIENTISTS TO NEW YORK
August 14, 2023
Enormous magnets housed in steel cylinders dot the floor of what was once the indoor basketball court of the Park Building at the City College of New York’s Harlem campus. One level down, state-of-the-art electron microscopes, each the size of an industrial refrigerator, and still more gigantic magnets have replaced an indoor swimming pool and […]
Science Articles
Flatiron Institute Machine Learning Summer School Trains Next-Gen Researchers on AI
July 20, 2023
Among the spectators at the Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney Island last summer were a group of 10 graduate students. They had come to New York City from places like India, Germany and California for summer school at the Simons Foundation’s Flatiron Institute, and algorithms were on the agenda. And they […]
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What Kind of Conversations?
I talk with scientists and writers, and sometimes with the rare person who is both.
I talk with scientists about how they got involved in their research, what is exciting about it, what was hard about it, what was surprising about it, and what they want a reader to take away when I write about it. I often do this as part of background research for an article I am writing, but sometimes the conversation itself is the product.
I talk with writers about their journey and process as a writer. What inspires them? What moves them? Where do the ideas come from? Which parts of writing are easy and which are hard? I do this mainly at the Manor Mill Prose Nights, and informally whenever I have the chance to talk to a writer.
I am seeking opportunities to have more conversations as the end product, whether as a published interview, a live conversation at an event, or as a video or podcast recording. I love connecting with another person in a one-on-one conversation, and building a connection between that person and an audience.
Contact me to start a conversation →
Image: Susan Keatley talks with Madison Smartt Bell about his novel, The Witch of Matongé, at the first Manor Mill Writers Guild Prose Night.