Mary Roach | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 20, 1959 Etna, New Hampshire |
| Occupation | Author (non-fiction) |
| Nationality | American |
| Genre | Popular science |
| Website | |
| www | |
Mary Roach is an author, specializing in popular science. Raised in Etna, New Hampshire, she received a bachelor's degree in psychology from Wesleyan University in 1981. Before Roach wrote books, she was a columnist, copy editor, and also worked in PR for a brief time. She currently resides in Oakland, California. To date, she has published four books: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2003), Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife (2005) (published in some markets as Six Feet Over: Adventures in the Afterlife), Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (2008) and Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void (2010).
Early Life edit
After college, Roach moved out to San Francisco, CA and spent a few years working as a freelance copy editor. From there, her writing career began while working part-time at the San Francisco Zoological Society, producing press releases on topics such as elephant wart surgery. On her days off from the SFZS, she wrote freelance articles for the San Francisco Chronicle's Sunday Magazine.[1]
From 1996 - 2005 Roach was part of The Grotto, a San Francisco based project and community of working writers and filmmakers. It was in this community, that Roach would get the push she needed to break into book writing.[2] While being interviewed by Alex C. Telander, of BookBanter, Roach answers the question of how she got started on her first book, "A few of us every year [from The Grotto] would make predictions for other people, where they'll be in a year. So someone made the prediction that, 'Mary will have a book contract.' I forgot about it and when October came around I thought, I have three months to pull together a book proposal and have a book contract. This is what literally lit the fire under my butt." [3]
Career edit
In 1986, she sold a humor piece about the IRS to the San Francisco Chronicle. That piece led to a number of humorous first-person essays and feature articles for such publications as Vogue, GQ, The New York Times Magazine, Discover Magazine, National Geographic, Outside Magazine, and Wired. She has also written several articles for Salon.com, she wrote reviews for tech gadgets at Inc.com, and has also had an article published in the Journal of Clinical Anatomy.[4] [5]Roach also had monthly columns in Reader’s Digest (“My Planet”) and Sports Illustrated for Women, (“The Slightly Wider World of Sports”). [6]
Besides being a best selling author, Roach is involved in many other projects on the side. Roach reviews books for The New York times and was the guest editor of the Best American Science and Nature Writing's 2011 edition. She also serves as a member of the Mars Institute's Advisory Board and was recently asked to join the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary. [7]
Personal Life edit
Mary Roach was born in Hanover, New Hampshire. Later her family would move to Etna, New Hampshire, where Roach attended Hanover High School.[8]
Roach has an office in downtown Oakland and lives in the Glenview neighborhood of Oakland with her husband Ed Rachles, who is an illustrator and graphic designer.[9] Roach also has two step-daughters.
While it’s clear that Roach has a wide variety of somewhat unusual interests, her interest is not limited to observation alone. While researching material for her book, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, Roach came across Dr. Jing Deng, a University College London Medical School senior lecturer in medical physics. Dr. Deng was experimenting with 4-D ultrasound imaging and was in need of test subjects to engage in intercourse while wearing the ultrasound equipment so that real-time images could be captured.[10] Roach and her husband Ed were the first willing participants in this study. When asked how she was able to convince her husband to participate, Roach said, “He’s crazy supportive. It was much harder for him, it was nothing for me. I was just a receptacle. I was just taking notes.” [11]
While Roach has often been quoted saying that she doesn't have much free time between writing books, something she is very fond of is backpacking and travel, the latter is something she has been able to do a great deal of while doing research for her articles and books; to that end, Roach has been able to visit all seven continents twice.[12] Roach has been to Antarctica a few times as part of the National Science Foundation's Polar Program; her Antarctic trip in 1997 was taken to write an article for Discover Magazine on meteorite hunting, with meteorite hunter Ralph Harvey. [13] [14]
Awards and Recognition edit
In 1995, her article entitled, "How to Win at Germ Warfare[15] " was a National Magazine Award Finalist. In this article, we learn the disturbing fact that bacteria and virus particles become aerosolized upon flushing your toilet. Roach learns from microbiologist, Chuck Gerba, of the University of Arizona, that, "Upon flushing, as many as 28,000 virus particles and 660,000 bacteria [are] jettisoned from the bowl.[15]
In 1996, her article on earthquake-proof bamboo houses, "The Bamboo Solution"[16] took the American Engineering Societies' Engineering Journalism Award, in the general interest magazine category. In this article we learn from, Jules Janssen, a civil engineer, that Bamboo is "stronger than wood, brick, and concrete...A short, straight column of bamboo with a top surface area of 10 square centimeters could support an 11,000-pound elephant."[16]
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers was a New York Times Bestseller, a 2003 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, and one of Entertainment Weekly's Best Books of 2003. Stiff also won the Amazon.com Editor's Choice award in 2003, was voted as a Borders Original Voices book, and was the winner of the Elle Reader's Prize. [17] Stiff has been translated into 17 languages, including Hungarian (Hullamerev) and Lithuanian (Negyveilai). [6] Stiff, was also selected for Washington State University's Common Reading Program in 2008-09.[18]
Roach's column "My Planet" (Reader's Digest) was runner-up in the humor category of the 2005 National Press Club awards. [6] [1] Roach's second book, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, was the recipient of the Elle Reader's Prize in October 2005. Spook was also listed as a New York Times Notable Books pick in 2005, as well as a New York Times Bestseller. In 2008, Roach's book, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, was chosen as the New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, it was in The Boston Globe's Top 5 Science Books, and was also listed as a bestseller in several other publications. [19]
In 2011, Roach's book, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, was chosen as the book of the year for the 7th annual One City One Book: San Francisco Reads literary event program. [20] Packing for Mars was also 6th on the New York Times Best Seller list. [21]
In 2012, Roach was the recipient of the Harvard Secular Society's Rushdie Award,[22] which is the award for outstanding lifetime achievement in cultural humanism. The same year, she received a Special Citation in Scientific inquiry from Maximum Fun.org.
Style edit
While some people might not see any connection between the topics that Roach chooses to write about and while some might falsely assume she’s obsessed with death – dead bodies in Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers and life after death in Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife – the common theme throughout all 4 of her books is actually the human body. Roach tells us, “My books are all [about the human body], Spook is a little bit of departure because it’s more about the soul rather than the flesh and blood body, but most of my books are about human bodies in unusual circumstances.”[23] When asked by Peter Sagal, of NPR, specifically how she picks her topics, she said, "Well, its got to have a little science, it's got to have a little history, a little humor - and something gross." [24] You can often find Roach saying that she doesn’t have a science degree, at least not in the “hard sciences” but that doesn’t stop her from acting as our “ambassador to the world of science” as Robynn “Swoopy” McCarthy says, in her Skepticality interview with Roach.[23]
It may be true that Roach doesn’t possess a science degree, but she is highly skilled at taking what might normally read as dull facts and figures and turns it into not only something that the average reader can understand, but also takes the reader with her every step of the way, from learning about the material to learning about the interesting people who study it.[25] As Burkhard Bilger of The New Yorker puts it, Mary Roach is, “the funniest science writer in the country.”[26] According to Roach, “Make no mistake, good science writing is medicine. It is a cure for ignorance and fallacy. Good science writing peels away the blindness, generates wonder, and brings the open palm to the forehead: ‘Oh! Now I get it!’”[27] The following quote from the introduction in her book Spook, shows us that Roach has a healthy level of skepticism about the world around her and that is something that is very evident in the pages of her books and even in the “obsessive” way that she researches her topics. “Flawed as it is, science remains the most solid god I’ve got. And so I’ve decided to turn to it, to see what it had to say on the topic of life after death. Because I know what religion says, and it perplexes me. It doesn’t deliver a single, coherent, scientifically sensible or provable scenario… Science seemed the better bet.”
Bibliography edit
References edit
- ^ a b Roach, Mary. "About Mary". Retrieved 21 July 2012.
- ^ "Former Grotto Inhabitants". Retrieved 22 July 2012.
- ^ Telander, Alex (9). "BookBanter Audio Episodes". BookBanter.net. Retrieved 22 July 2012.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=and|year=/|date=mismatch (help); Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - ^ Roach, Mary (October 2010). "The C Word: Dead Man Driving". Clinical Anatomy. 24 (3). Wiley-Liss: 277. doi:10.1002/ca.21056. PMID 21433076. Retrieved 27 July 2012.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link) - ^ Roach, Mary. "About Mary". Retrieved 5 July 2012.
- ^ a b c Roach, Mary. "Mary Roach". KQED. p. KQED Arts. Retrieved 21 July 2012.
- ^ Roach, Mary (28). "Mary Roach". Twitter. Retrieved 5 July 2012.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=and|year=/|date=mismatch (help); Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - ^ "Hanover High School Wikipedia". Wikipedia. Retrieved 25 July 2012.
- ^ Lundell Garver, Beth (23). "The Curious Charm of a Writer's Pad". Retrieved 5 July 2012.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=and|year=/|date=mismatch (help) - ^ "Sex Research, the Video". Slate V. 23. Retrieved 22 July 2012.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=and|year=/|date=mismatch (help) - ^ Murphy, Joel (24). "Getting to Know Mary Roach". HoboTrashcan.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=and|year=/|date=mismatch (help); Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - ^ Birnbaum, Robert (1). "Mary Roach" (Audio/Transcription). The Morning News. Retrieved 30 July 2012.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=and|year=/|date=mismatch (help); More than one of|author=and|last=specified (help); Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - ^ Roach, Mary (May 1997). "Meteorite Hunters" (Print). Online Magazine: Discover Magazine. Retrieved 25 July 2012.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link) - ^ Lipschultz, Michael. "Meteorite Studies: Terrestrial and extraterrestrial applications, 1997" (PDF). Antarctic Journal. Retrieved 22 July 2012.
- ^ a b Roach, Mary. "How to Win at Germ Warfare" (PDF). slhspapbio. Retrieved 22 July 2012.
- ^ a b Roach, Mary (June 1996). "The Bamboo Solution" (Magazine). Discover Magazine. Retrieved 22 July 2012.
{{cite web}}: More than one of|author=and|last=specified (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link) - ^ Roach, Mary. "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers". Retrieved 21 July 2012.
- ^ Pullman (12). "WSU News Center". WSU News Center. Retrieved 22 July 2012.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=and|year=/|date=mismatch (help); Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - ^ Roach, Mary. "Spook:Science Tackles the Afterlife". Retrieved 21 July 2012.
- ^ "One City One Book 2011". San Francisco Public Library. 2011. Retrieved 5 July 2012.
- ^ Roach, Mary. "Packing for Mars". Retrieved 21 July 2012.
- ^ Chandonnet, Sarah (29). "Author Mary Roach to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award". Humanist Community Project At Harvard. Harvardhumanist.org. Retrieved 29 July 2012.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=and|year=/|date=mismatch (help); Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - ^ a b McCarthy, Robynn Swoopy (24). "Packing for Mars" (Audio). Skepticality Podcast. Skeptic Magazine. Retrieved 30 July 2012.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=and|year=/|date=mismatch (help); Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - ^ Siegal, Peter (18). "Science Writer Mary Roach Plays Not My Job" (Audio/Transcript). NPR Radio. NPR. Retrieved 30 July 2012.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=and|year=/|date=mismatch (help); Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - ^ Savage, Adam. "Mary Roach in Conversation with Adam Savage". San Francisco Public Library. SFPL. Retrieved 30 July 2012.
- ^ Roach, Mary. "Bonk: Mary Roach" (video). YouTube. Retrieved 30 July 2012.
- ^ Doughty, Bill (4). "Critical Curious Thinking: Mary Roach" (Blog). Navy Reads Blog. Retrieved 30 July 2012.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=and|year=/|date=mismatch (help); More than one of|author=and|last=specified (help); Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help)
External links edit
Selected Media Coverage edit
Video edit
| Date | Source | Title | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | Colbert Report | Roach on Spook | Stephen Colbert and Roach contact a spirit |
| 2008 | Authors@Google | Roach on Bonk | |
| 2008 | Los Angeles Public Library | ForaTV | In Conversation with Beth Lapides |
| 2009 | TED Talks | 10 Things You Didn't Know About Orgasm | Roach shares what she learned writing Bonk |
| August 2010 | The Daily Show | Roach on Packing for Mars | Jon Stewart and Roach discuss space shuttle toilets |
| August 2010 | Commonwealth Club of California | Roach on Packing for Mars | "Journey Through Outer Space Without Leaving Earth" |
| November 2011 | San Francisco Public Library | Roach in Conversation with Adam Savage | One City One Book author event, interviewed by Adam Savage |
Audio edit
| Date | Source | Subject | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | All Things Considered | Roach on Stiff | NPR's Robert Siegel Interviews Roach on her first book |
| 2010 | Skepticality | On Packing for Mars and Science | Roach on Skepticality podcast, the official podcast of Skeptic Magazine |
| 2011 | The Morning News (online magazine) | On Packing for Mars | Interviewed by Robert Birnbaum on PFM and other topics |
| 2011 | Star Talk Radio | "Spooky Science" | Interviewed by Neil deGrasse Tyson w/guests Phil Plait and Joe Nickell |
| 2012 | QUITit | General Interview | Roach is interviewed by Brian Thompson at Maximum Fun's Maxfuncon |
| Various | Radiolab | Various Interviews | Three different podcast interviews w/Roach |
Articles edit
| Dates | Publications | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1997-2001 | Salon | Various topics |
| 2000-2001 | Inc. Magazine | On tech gadgets |
| 2010 | Boing Boing | Various topics |
| 2001-2012 | Outside Magazine | Various topics |
| Various | Byliner | Comprehensive Article List |
Category:Living people Category:American science writers Category:American medical writers Category:Magazine writers Category:Wesleyan University alumni