Member articles

Rectangular photo of Bethann Garramon Merkle’s office bookshelf showing an eclectic mix of books on science communication, writing, poetry, collage art, feminism, burnout, and happiness. Photo credit: Bethann Garramon Merkle

Bethann Garramon Merkle (NASW member) and Stephen B. Heard—Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences: An Evidence-Based Approach

“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.

Rectangular photo of Jim Morris’ office bookshelf showing a small sample of the thousands of legal, medical, and other documents he used to write The Cancer Factory. Photo credit: Jim Morris.

Jim Morris—The Cancer Factory: Industrial Chemicals, Corporate Deception, and the Hidden Deaths of American Workers

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.

Rectangular photo of Barbara Gastel’s office bookshelf showing books on writing, editing, fact-checking, and copy-editing, along with several standard style manuals. Photo credit: Barbara Gastel

Barbara Gastel—Medical Editing: A Guide to Learning the Craft and Building Your Career

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.”

Rectangular photo of Marie Zhuikov’s office bookshelf, showing many books of poems by individual poets, poetry anthologies, and books on writing. Photo credit: Marie Zhuikov.

Marie Zhuikov—High Fire Danger: Poems of Love and Nature

“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.

Rectangular photo of Brad Fox’s office bookshelf showing works on the Amazon, folk healing, plants, and indigenous cultures. Photo credit: Brad Fox.

Brad Fox—Another Bone-Swapping Event

On March 9, 2020, Brad Fox flew from New York to Peru to spend 10 days with a traditional curandero, or healer, learning about plant medicines in a remote jungle four hours’ walk from the nearest dirt road. After WHO declared the COVID pandemic two days later, Peru shut down international and domestic travel. In Another Bone-Swapping Event, Fox shares experiences from his 14 months there.

Rectangular photo of Ryan Goldberg’s office bookshelf showing books on urban ornithology, birds in America, birds in New York State, and specific species of birds. Photo credit: Ryan Goldberg

Ryan Goldberg—Bird City: Adventures in New York's Urban Wilds

Contrary to common belief, cities offer superb birding ops, Ryan Goldberg reports in Bird City: Adventures in New York's Urban Wilds. Goldberg takes readers around New York and around the year, to urban canyons, parks, rivers, & marshes, examining the impact of air quality, bright lights, window strikes, & more on 100s of bird species. Thankfully, few women today wear hats adorned with birds.

Rectangular photo of Ainissa Ramirez’s office bookshelf showing works on Black and White male and female scientists and their discoveries. Photo credit: Ainissa Ramirez.

Ainissa Ramirez—Spark: Jim West's Electrifying Adventures in Creating the Microphone

Growing up on a farm in Virginia in the 1930s, Jim West loved taking radios and other devices apart and putting them back together to figure out how they worked. In Spark: Jim West's Electrifying Adventures in Creating the Microphone, Ainissa Ramirez introduces readers aged 5-9 to West’s role in developing the ubiquitous microphone. It’s the 1st book in her children’s series on Black inventors.

Rectangular photo of David Stipp’s office bookshelf featuring several books by and about Charles Darwin and evolution, along with books on ants, dogs, sleep, and nature. Photo credit: David Stipp.

David Stipp—Why Rats Laugh & Jellyfish Sleep and Other Enchanting Stories of Evolution

“Familiar things we tend to ignore in our daily haste are often more interesting than they seem,” David Stipp asserts. In Why Rats Laugh & Jellyfish Sleep and Other Enchanting Stories of Evolution, he ponders Darwinian puzzles such as why many species of bees have yellow & black bands, & why humans need to sleep. Why questions about living things, he explains, often point to adaptive purposes.

Rectangular photo of Alison Pearce Stevens’ office bookshelf displaying works on dog intelligence, social behavior, genetics, and performance. Photo credit: Alison Pearce Stevens.

Alison Pearce Stevens—Detective Dogs: How Working Dogs Sniff Out Invasive Species

Running for miles to locate invasive weeds, mussels, and insects, e.g., the spotted lanternfly, is all in a day’s work for the dog sleuths Alison Pearce Stevens describes in Detective Dogs: How Working Dogs Sniff Out Invasive Species. Readers aged 8-12 will learn about pros and cons of tactics used to keep invasives under control: removing them, destroying them, and introducing natural predators.

Rectangular photo of Deirdre Lockwood’s office bookshelf showing many books of poetry, some by pivotal twentieth-century poets such as John Berryman and Robert Hass, and others by younger poets. Photo credit: Deirdre Lockwood.

Deirdre Lockwood—An Introduction to Error: Poems

“I used to follow parcels of water around the ocean,” Deirdre Lockwood reports in her poem, “My Chemistry.” She divides her first book of poetry An Introduction to Error into four sections: Materials, Methods, Results, & Discussion. A self-described “observationalist,” she offers meditations on research and life: “detecting what is or trying to write it down and not get too seasick along the way.”