Hamilton Book Month

 

Lady Goodfellow Chapel (via Gate 1)

Waikato University

Wednesday 5 March

6.30pm

 

Penguins, pumice and the past: The adventures of a science writer

Rebecca Priestley’s work as a science writer has taken her on journeys to Scott Base, Antarctica and to Raoul Island in the Kermadec Islands – journeys that have inspired blog posts, articles, essays and more. In her books, she’s journeyed back in time, writing about New Zealand scientists, editing an anthology of writing by scientists and, most recently, exploring New Zealand’s nuclear history in Mad on Radium: New Zealand in the Atomic Age (Auckland University Press, 2012). Rebecca will talk about the adventure and challenges of writing about science, the broader challenges of science communication and what inspires her in her work.

 

Rebecca writes a weekly science column for the New Zealand Listener, and has written for print and online media such as New Zealand Geographic, Te Ara and Scientific American Online. She is the editor of The Awa Book of New Zealand Science, which won the 2009 Royal Society of New Zealand Science Book Prize; the co-author of Atoms, Dinosaurs and DNA: 68 great New Zealand scientists, which won the 2009 LIANZA Elsie Locke Award for Non Fiction, and the author of Mad on Radium: New Zealand in the Atomic Age. Her most recent publication is an essay Hitching a Ride in the Pacific Highways edition of the Australian literary journal Griffith Review.

 

Rebecca Priestley is Senior Lecturer in the Science in Context Group, School of Chemical and Physical Sciences at Victoria University of Wellington, where she teaches science communication and history of science. She is also an Associate of the Alan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution and is an award winning science writer.

 

Rebecca's event is supported by Bennetts Bookshop.