I am a health and science journalist. I started my career at the small but mighty Concord Monitor in New Hampshire, where I discovered my love for narrative writing. I wrote about health care at the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Boston Globe, and I was part of the Globe staff that won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news, for coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings. For three years, I led the features report at the Portland Press Herald in Maine, where I edited weekly sections on arts and entertainment, books, food, and sustainable living. My writing also has been published by The New York Times, Mother Jones, Politico, the Boston Sunday Globe magazine, National Journal, The Week, ParentMap, and WBUR. I have been a fellow with the Poynter Institute, the National Library of Medicine and the Health Coverage Fellowship led by writer Larry Tye.

Mother Brain: How Neuroscience Is Rewriting the Story of Parenthood, published by Henry Holt & Co., is my first book. The writing and reporting of Mother Brain was supported by a generous grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Public Understanding of Science and Technology Program. Parts of Mother Brain were written in the cabins of the Hewnoaks Artist Residency.

I live in a 1920s bungalow near the ocean in Maine, where I garden poorly and serve as a board member of the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. I especially enjoy assignments that allow me to work with my husband, the extremely talented photographer Yoon S. Byun. We publish dispatches about our most important collaboration, parenting our two young children, on Instagram: @StrewnWonder.

(Photo: Yoon S. Byun)