Telling the Best Stories in Science

Storytelling is an ancient art—one that predates the written word by millennia. It’s also one of the most basic forms of communicating information from one person to another. So why do so many of us struggle to tell the stories of science? What can we do to enhance tension in our stories? Or improve narrative? Or leverage the unique storytelling qualities embedded in different mediums like audio, video, or other digital formats?

These are some of the questions we’ll talk about in our upcoming panel, Telling the Best Stories in Science, with some of the best storytelling experts from all over the country!

Register here

Panelists:

• Sumanth Prabhaker is the editor of Orion, an environmental magazine which recently celebrated its 40th anniversary. He is also the founder of two nonprofit literary organizations: Madras Press, a charitable publisher whose catalog includes work by Donald Barthelme, Lydia Davis, and David Foster Wallace; and Migrant Books, a pop-up bookstore for international children’s literature. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he was an editor for the journal Ecotone. He lives in Northampton MA.
• Nancy Lord, an Alaska resident and former Alaska Writer Laureate, is the author or editor of ten books related to northern subjects and the environment. She’s addressed the climate crisis in her narrative nonfiction book, Early Warming: Crisis and Response in the Climate-Changed North (2011), and her novel, pH (2017.) She is a former commercial salmon fisherman and currently teaches science and medical writing for Johns Hopkins University. Her M.F.A. degree is from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her website is www.writernancylord.com.
• Wayne Curtis is the author of And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails and The Last Great Walk: The True Story of a 1909 Walk from New York to San Francisco and Why It Matters Today. He’s  written for dozens of publications, including The Atlantic, New York Times, Wall St. Journal, American Archeology, Preservation, and The Smart Set. He writes frequently about travel, history, cocktails and spirits. He’s been a columnist for The Atlantic, The Daily Beast. American Scholar, and The Smart Set, and currently writes columns for Garden & Gun and Imbibe. He teaches nonfiction techniques at the masters in writing program at Johns Hopkins University and lives mostly in New Orleans, sometimes in Maine.
• Shane M. Hanlon, PhD, Executive Producer and co-host of the American Geophysical Union’s podcast, Third Pod from the Sun. A conservation biologist turned science communicator, he is also Manager of AGU’s Sharing Science program where he teaches fellow scientists how to communicate effectively. He is also a Senior Producer with The Story Collider. Find him on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.