In 2018, her book Les Ombres de Stig Dagerman (The Writer and the Refugee), written together with Lo Dagerman, was published in France by Maurice Nadeau.
A graduate of Amherst College, she lives in western Massachusetts with her husband, the writer and law professor Lawrence Douglas.
Current Home:
Sunderland, Massachusetts
Place of Birth:
Chicago
Education:
Amherst College; Master’s from Yale Law School (as a journalism fellow)
Most memorable or most influential class at Amherst:
Definitely my thesis, as I sweated to write 60 pages in half-decent French about Marguerite Duras.
Most memorable or most influential professor:
Susan Ross Huston, a gifted and incredibly generous professor who (heartbreakingly) did not get tenure.
Research Interests:
Botany! I'm currently immersed in writing a book called Do Plants Know Math?, working together with three scientists.
Awards and Prizes:
My first book, The Rarest of the Rare, was named one of the year's best science books by Discover magazine.
Favorite Book:
The Door, by Hungarian novelist Magda Szabo
Favorite Author:
Olga Tokarczuk
Tips for aspiring writers:
Get your tuchus on the chair and write every single day.
Tell us a bit about your path to becoming an author:
I started out writing for the Student, of course. And then I was a reporter for daily newspapers (the best training imaginable!) in my 20s, before finding a happy niche writing books about science and history.