The Science Essayist

The Science Essayist is Meera Lee Sethi, an inquisitive nonfiction writer and part-time skinner of birds.

I grew up in Singapore, but moved to the U.S. to earn a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Brandeis University and a Masters in Children’s Literature and Teaching from Simmons College. Since then I have worked as a 6th grade humanities teacher in a charter school serving Boston’s inner-city youth, a textbook editor at an educational publishing house, and—most recently—a freelance writer covering everything from education policy to Jungian tarot readings.

Since 2008 science has been the focus of my writing career. I am especially interested in stories that wrestle with the complicated intersection between science, society, and culture. My professional work includes features about loneliness and the brain, how art museums help teach doctors physical observation skills, and the autocratic government policies that propel—and hold back—scientific progress at Singapore’s big-budget biomedical science park Biopolis. I am also a contributing editor for the free online science magazine Inkling.

In 2010 I won a won a science writing fellowship from the Center for Science, Policy and Outcomes at the University of Arizona, and as a result am currently working with researcher Adam Briggle of the University of North Texas on an article exploring the role of philosophical thought in science policy.

In this personal space I range more freely, sometimes writing explicitly about scientific facts or theories and sometimes leaping from them to other topics entirely and then back again. I write in the spirit of Montaigne’s essay, because I like the notion that I am testing myself, and because what I do here is wholly experimental (like all experiments, it embraces the possibility of failure).

You’re welcome to visit me elsewhere or email. I used to keep a mostly non-scientific blog here.