Download resume

I began my editorial career in Washington, D.C., when I moved here from Ohio after graduating from Marietta College with a degree in English. While working in entry-level jobs (waitressing, writing advertising copy for a shoe company), I completed an evening program on publishing skills offered by George Washington University's former Continuing Education for Women Center. That led to a job as an editorial layout assistant to the art director of National Geographic. After three years I left to get a master's in journalism at the University of Missouri.

In grad school I showed an unexpected talent for science writing and was awarded a Nate Haseltine Fellowship in Science Writing. It was a formative experience, as I've done a great deal of science writing since then, mostly interpreting science for lay readers. While in grad school I also received a Rotary International Fellowship and spent a year in South Africa. (I recently went back for a reunion of Rotary scholars who studied at the University of Cape Town. While there I visited the couple who hosted me in 1983, now both in their 90s.)

Unsuccessful in landing a newspaper reporting job upon my return to the States, I did freelance writing on education, health and other topics for many publications. At the same time, I worked nights as an on-call copy editor at The Washington Post and was an adjunct instructor of English composition at Montgomery College in Takoma Park, Md. (One nice interlude: working in Paris in the summer of 1987 as a sub editor at the International Herald-Tribune, then co-owned by The Post.)

Later I worked as a writer-editor at NIH, where I received an Award for Outstanding Performance, and at AAAS, where my duties included writing "SciPak" summaries of peer-review reports in Science, distributed weekly to reporters and editors around the world. At AAAS I was a member of the team that developed EurekAlert! as an online source of information about research advances in science, medicine and technology.

In the late 1990s I lived with my husband, an economist, in Jakarta for two years. There I did writing and editing for the Center for International Forestry Research in Bogor and gave tours as a docent at the National Museum. As head of the publications committee of the museum-based Indonesian Heritage Society I managed a project to produce the popular Jakarta Explorer guidebook. From 2000 to 2009 I traveled regularly to Southeast Asia as an editorial contractor for several international research centers.

Over the past decade I've also been a contract writer for National Geographic -- for the Online News and Books divisions -- and have done part-time copy editing for USA Weekly and now The Chronicle of Higher Education. Through part-time studies I completed an M.A. in writing (creative nonfiction) from Johns Hopkins University, which named me 2007 Outstanding Graduate. I subsequently did a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. In 2011, I helped launch the Washington Independent Review of Books, for which I'm now a senior editor and contributing reviewer.

Over the years my articles and essays have appeared in outlets such Smithsonian.com, The Washington Post, Potomac Review, The Washingtonian, Science News, The Indonesian Observer, Humanities, The New Physician and Ford Foundation Report. My writing portfolio also includes annual reports, newsletters, brochures, press releases, technical reports, book reviews, web text and even legends for National Geographic maps.

Today I live with my husband, Bruce, in Falls Church, Va., and am working on my first book.

Return to top