Melinda Wenner Moyer


Melinda Wenner Moyer is a science journalist based in the Hudson Valley, New York. She is a contributing editor at Scientific American and a columnist for Slate.

Early life and education

Moyer graduated Summa Cum Laude from St. Paul's School, Concord, New Hampshire in 1997. At the University of Michigan she received a Bachelor of Science in molecular biology and a Bachelor of Music in composition. With a science education, she worked at a bio tech company in the UK before deciding to switch careers and become a science writer. In 2006 she received a master's degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting from New York University.

Career

Early in her career, she worked briefly as an editor, and then became a freelance journalist. Her early features were for institutional publications, particularly in Pitt Med, of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Clips from these writings were used to showcase her talent, and this opened the doors to more prestigious publications. She now avoids non-journalistic work entirely; without any clear guidelines, the possibility of conflicts of interest from working for institutional publications may lead to ethical situations difficult to navigate.
After a "fat pitch" to Slate, Moyer became a frequent contributor. She is now the science-based parenting columnist, and has written over 100 articles for Slate. Other publications have included the New York Times, Mother Jones, Nature, Discover, Popular Science, O: The Oprah magazine and, Self, among others.
As of March, 2018, she is a visiting scholar at New York University. She had previously been an adjunct assistant professor of journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. She was a 2018 Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellow.
The Kavanaugh hearings for the U.S. Supreme Court led her to review and write about the long-term effects of sexual assault on teenagers.

Awards

She married science journalist and deputy editor of Quanta Magazine Michael Moyer in 2009. They have two children.