The Craft of Science Writing Publishes Today
The Craft of Science Writing comes out today! It’s available in paperback, hardcover, and ebook forms wherever you like to buy books.
Articles by: Siri Carpenter
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Donations to TON Will Be Matched Through December 31
To make our work possible, The Open Notebook depends on donations from our community. Thanks to a pool of generous matching donors, gifts made to TON from now through December 31 will be doubled, up to a total of $5,000. If TON is a meaningful resource for you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation.
Vote Now for the Peeple’s Choice Award!
Schrodinger’s Peep. Rice CRISPR/Peep9. The first “Peep”eration with ether. All monumental advances in science—with a marshmallow twist. These are just three of the 50 dioramas created by science-minded crafters and entered in the first-ever World’s Finest (and Only…As Far as We Know) Science-Themed Peeps Diorama Contest. Our gallery of the sweet tableaux is now open, and anyone can vote (through April 14) for their favorite to win the highly coveted Peeple’s Choice Award.
Help Kids Interview Scientists at the Science Storytellers Booth at AAAS
What happens if you ask a child, “Hey, do you want to talk to a scientist?” That question drove science writer Jenny Cutraro to develop Science Storytellers, a public engagement program that aims to sit children down to interview scientists, just like professional journalists do—and then to share their science stories. The Science Storytellers booth will be at AAAS’s Family Science Days in Washington, DC on February 16 and 17. Join us!
Christie Aschwanden Tackles the Science of Exercise Recovery
Christie Aschwanden thought writing a book about how the body recovers from exercise and builds resilience for further challenges should be easy. In her mind’s eye, she could almost picture how the chapters would unspool. But as she dug into reporting and writing her new book, Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery, she learned how mistaken she’d been—laughably so, she says.
Nidhi Subbaraman Uncovers a Story of Medical Neglect—and of Useful Anger—on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation
When BuzzFeed News’s Nidhi Subbaraman began covering the Rosebud Sioux tribe’s lawsuit against the U.S. government for its failure to provide treaty-mandated health care to tribal members, she discovered “seriously horrifying stories” of substandard care and neglect. Digging deeper, she found a narrative of not only hurt and outrage but also resilience and activism. Here, Subbaraman tells the story behind her story.
How to Do a Close Read
Reading nonfiction stories closely, for the purpose of studying the craft, usually requires reading them several times with some purposeful questions in mind, then giving yourself the gift of time to think about how you might incorporate some of your observations into your own work. Here, we suggest some of the kinds of questions you can ask about a feature story to deepen your perceptions of it and to get you thinking about how writers make the most of their craft.
Help Kids Interview Scientists at the Science Storytellers Booth at AAAS
What happens if you ask a child, “Hey, do you want to talk to a scientist?” That question drove science writer Jenny Cutraro to develop Science Storytellers, a public engagement program that aims to sit children down to interview scientists, just like professional journalists do—and then to share their science stories. The answer, it turns out, is that kids eat it up. Want to see for yourself?
Join TON and Science Storytellers at Family Science Days at the 2018 AAAS meeting in Austin, Texas.
Apoorva Mandavilli Recounts an Unlikely Recovery from Brain Injury
In December 2014, Steve Mishkin suffered a near-fatal brain injury. But he recovered, for reasons as uncertain as the events that led to his injury. Writing for The Atlantic, Apoorva Mandavilli details the many “ingredients” that likely contributed to Mishkin’s recovery. Challenges of reporting the story, Mandavilli says, included piecing together a detailed medical narrative, investigating a stubborn mystery, and maintaining journalistic distance while reporting on deeply personal events in the lives of friends. Here, she tells the story behind her story.
Science Blogging: The Essential Guide Makes an Online Home at TON
Today, The Open Notebook is pleased and proud to announce a partnership with the authors of Science Blogging: The Essential Guide. The book, forthcoming on March 1 from Yale University Press and funded by grants from the Sloan Foundation and from the National Association of Science Writers, is aimed at science journalists, scientists, and anyone else who has something to say about science and wants to do it on a blogging platform.
Seth Mnookin Follows a Family Battling a Rare Genetic Disease
Seth Mnookin was drawn to Bertrand Might’s family’s story by a simple question: What do you do when you learn your child could die from a disease with no other known sufferers? Reporting for The New Yorker on the scientific and administrative complexities surrounding rare diseases. In his reporting, Mnookin discovered “remarkable amounts of grace” in the families struggling to understand and cope with their children’s illness. Here, Mnookin tells the story behind his story.
Writing Magic: The Mechanic and the Muse
If you haven’t had the pleasure of taking a writing or editing course from Jacqui Banaszynski, you’re missing out. Banaszynski, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and editor who teaches at the University of Missouri School of […]
Deborah Blum: From Book to Documentary Film
Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Deborah Blum’s five books have immersed her in the worlds of animal rights, the psychology of affection, the neurology of sex, the search for paranormal phenomena, and the chemistry of poisons. Her New York […]
Natural Habitat: Mary Caperton Morton
TON goes on the road with science writer Mary Caperton Morton, whose office—and home—is a custom-built lightweight trailer that has taken her and her canine companions all over the Western United States and beyond.
Natural Habitat: Jessa Gamble
The Open Notebook visits award-winning journalist Jessa Gamble, author ofThe Siesta and the Midnight Sun: How We Measure and Experience Time. She blogs at The Last Word On Nothing and splits her time between Oxford, England and Yellowknife, Canada.
Natural Habitat: Priya Shetty
TON visits the Brighton, U.K. office of freelance science journalist Priya Shetty. Shetty covers science, society and policy in the developing world for The Lancet, consults for The World Health Organization, and writes a design blog.
George Johnson Chases Lightning
Some people fret over the chances that lightning might strike the same place twice. After three summers trailing lightning-chaser Tim Samaras on a unique photographic quest, science writer George Johnson would perhaps have been content […]
Brian Vastag Profiles a Dinosaur Tracker
When Washington Post science writer Brian Vastag found Ray Stanford, an amateur dinosaur footprint tracker in the Washington, DC suburbs who had found an unusual baby dinosaur footprint, he thought he had stumbled upon a […]
Jennifer Kahn Asks: Can a Child Psychopath Be Saved?
Of all mental disorders, none elicits more revulsion or less sympathy than psychopathy. Psychopathy is widely considered incurable, but some researchers have theorized that it might be possible to treat “fledgling psychopaths” if they can be identified early enough. In a much-discussed 2012 New York Times Magazine story, journalist Jennifer Kahn examined this controversial idea. Here, she tells the story behind her story.
Natural Habitat: Christie Aschwanden
TON visits Christie Aschwanden, award-winning writer and editor for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, O: the Oprah Magazine, Slate, and many other publications. A former professional skier, Christie lives in western Colorado.
Natural Habitat: Cynthia Graber
TON visits the Somerville, Massachusetts home office and local haunts of Cynthia Graber, a radio and print reporter whose work has appeared on Scientific American’s podcast and on the public radio shows Studio 360, The World, Living on Earth, and the World Vision Report; and in many print publications.
Greg Miller Examines Mental Health Care in Indonesia
For many people in the developing world who are mentally ill, psychiatric care is little more than a prison sentence. In one corner of Indonesia, that’s beginning to change, thanks in part to the 2004 […]
Natural Habitat: Ed Yong
TON visits the working lair (and local pub and deer-filled park) of Ed Yong, London-based freelance science journalist and creator of the award-winning blog Not Exactly Rocket Science. (Caution for those with small children hovering: Ed has a bit of a potty mouth midway through. Just a bit. It’s mild. The kids’ll be fine.)
Helen Pearson Profiles an Activist Turned Scientist
A good profile of a scientist goes beyond the science itself—and that’s why Helen Pearson’s ears perked up when she learned the personal story of Joe Thornton, a University of Oregon evolutionary biologist whose first […]
THE CRAFT OF SCIENCE WRITING
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 1, 2020
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