Video archive of members-only NASW virtual events from 2026.
“Writing is hard. Teaching and mentoring writing often is even harder. It doesn’t have to be,” Bethann Garramon Merkle and Stephen Heard assert in Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences: An Evidence-Based Approach. Students need writing skills they can use over their entire careers, the authors say. They offer teachers a well-stocked toolbox of tactics to help students achieve that goal.
NASW student members looking for great science writing internships or one-on-one networking conversation with editors at news and science organizations are invited to register for the 2026 NASW Virtual Internship Fair.
Dec. 19, 2025
Cancer and other work-related illnesses take 120,000 lives in the U.S. annually, Jim Morris writes in The Cancer Factory: Industrial Chemicals, Corporate Deception, and the Hidden Deaths of American Workers, NASW’s 2025 Science in Society Book Award winner. Workers are mostly on their own, he says. Workplace safety varies. OSHA’s ineffectual. Physicians often fail to ask patients what work they do.
The NASW Freelance Committee virtual meetup on Feb. 5 will be an open networking social with small group discussions in breakout rooms.
Medical editing is a helping profession that benefits publishers, authors, patients, the media, and the public, Barbara Gastel asserts in Medical Editing: A Guide to Learning the Craft and Building Your Career. Her book aims to introduce the field, foster readers’ core knowledge and skills, and describe career possibilities. “Even the best writers,” she says, “benefit from the input of an editor.”
“My body contains more Neanderthal DNA variants than 87% of the rest of customers in the 23andMe database,” Marie Zhuikov reports in her poem, “Unwitting Neanderthals.” It appears in High Fire Danger: Poems of Love & Nature”, a collection of works written during Zhuikov’s three decades as a science writer for Wisconsin Sea Grant. Another poem, “Lake Superior Auntie,” recounts that experience.
This year, the National Association of Science Writers awarded its annual Diane McGurgan Service Award to NASW member Virginia Gewin. Gewin was recognized by the NASW Board of Directors for more than a decade of volunteer service to NASW.
Dec. 2, 2025
Each year, the #SciWriAwards recognize some of the best works in science journalism and science writing, as judged by fellow science journalists and science writers. Deadline to enter is Feb. 1, 2026.
