Mary Roach (born March 20, 1959) is an American author specializing inpopular science andhumor.^[1] She has published sevenNew York Times bestsellers:Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2003),Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife (2005),Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (2008),Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void (2010),Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal (2013),Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War (2016), andFuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law (2021).

Mary Roach
Roach in 2016
Born	(1959-03-20)March 20, 1959 (age 66) Etna, New Hampshire, U.S.
Occupation	Author humorist
Genre	Popular science humor
Website
maryroach.net

Mary Roach was born inHanover, New Hampshire^[2] Her family moved toEtna, a village within the town of Hanover, and Roach attendedHanover High School and received abachelor's degree inpsychology fromWesleyan University in 1981.

After college, Roach moved toSan Francisco,California, and spent a few years working as a freelancecopy editor. Her writing career began in the public affairs office of theSan Francisco Zoological Society, producingpress releases on topics such aswart surgery on elephants. On her days off from the SFZS, she wrote freelance articles forSan Francisco Chronicle's Sunday magazine,Image.^[3]

She has written essays and feature articles for such publications asVogue,GQ,The New York Times Magazine,Discover Magazine,National Geographic,Outside Magazine, andWired^[4][5] as well as columns forSalon.com, In Health ("Stitches"),Reader's Digest ("My Planet"), andSports Illustrated for Women ("The Slightly Wider World of Sports"),^[4] andInc.com.

From 1996 to 2005, Roach was part of "the Grotto", a San Francisco-based project and community of working writers and filmmakers. It was in this community that Roach got the push she needed to break into book writing.^[6] While being interviewed by Alex C. Telander of BookBanter, Roach answered the question of how she got started on her first book:

A few of us every year [from the Grotto] would make predictions for other people, where they'll be in a year. So someone made the prediction that, 'Mary will have a book contract.' I forgot about it and when October came around I thought, I have three months to pull together a book proposal and have a book contract. This is what literally lit the fire under my butt.^[7]

Although Roach writes primarily about science, she never intended to make it her career. Roach stated in an interview with TheVerge.com, when asked what exactly got her hooked on writing about science, "To be honest, it turned out that science stories were always, consistently, the most interesting stories I was assigned to cover. I didn't plan it like this, and I don't have a formal background in science, or any education in science journalism."^[8]

Roach has appeared on numerous television and radio programs includingThe Daily Show,^[9]The Colbert Report,^[10]Coast to Coast AM,^[11]NPR's "Fresh Air",^[12] andC-SPAN2 BookTV"In Depth."^[13] Her 2009TED talk^[14] "Ten Things You Didn't Know About Orgasm",^[15] made the organization's list of its most popular talks of all time.^[16]

Roach reviews books forThe New York Times and was the guest editor of theBest American Science and Nature Writing 2011 edition. She also serves as a member of theMars Institute's Advisory Board, as an ambassador forMars One^[17] and an advisor forOrion magazine.^[18] She has been an Osher Fellow^[19] at theSan Francisco Exploratorium and has served on the Usage Panel of theAmerican Heritage Dictionary.^[20]

Roach currently resides inOakland, California, where she continues to write.^[21]

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers was aNew York Times Bestseller, a 2003Barnes & Noble "Discover Great New Writers" pick, and one ofEntertainment Weekly's "Best Books of 2003." The book has been translated into at least 17 languages, includingHungarian (Hullamerev) andLithuanian (Negyvėliai).Stiff was also selected for theWashington State University Common Reading Program in 2008–2009.^[22]

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife,aNew York Times Bestseller, was listed as aNew York Times Notable Books pick in 2005.Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, was chosen as theNew York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, was amongThe Boston Globe's Top 5 Science Books, and was listed as a bestseller in several other publications.^[23] In 2011,Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, was chosen as the book of the year for the seventh annual "One City One Book: San Francisco Reads" literary event program.^[24]Packing for Mars was also sixth on theNew York Times Bestseller list.^[25]Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal was also aNew York Times Bestseller and on the shortlist for the 2014Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books.^[26]

Roach was the recipient of theHarvardSecular Society's Rushdie Award^[27] in 2012 for her outstanding lifetime achievement in culturalhumanism. The same year, she received a Special Citation inscientific inquiry fromMaximum Fun. Her article onearthquake-proofbamboo houses, "The Bamboo Solution",^[28] took the American Engineering Societies Engineering Journalism Award in the general interest magazine category in 1996. In 1995, Roach's article "How to Win at Germ Warfare"^[29] was aNational Magazine Award finalist.^[30]

• Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2003,W. W. Norton & Company;ISBN 0-393-32482-6OCLC 55230887)

• Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife (2005, W. W. Norton & Company;ISBN 0-393-32912-7OCLC 76884889)

• Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (2008, W. W. Norton & Company;ISBN 978-0-393-06464-3OCLC 930702693)

• Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void (2010, W. W. Norton & Company;ISBN 978-0-393-06847-4OCLC 1291915151)

• The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2011 (editor, 2010,Mariner Books)

• Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal (2013, W. W. Norton & Company;ISBN 978-0393081572OCLC 811599508)

• My Planet: Finding Humor in the Oddest Places (2013,Penguin Publishing;ISBN 978-1621450719OCLC 822892403)

• Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War (2016, W. W. Norton & Company;ISBN 978-0-393-24544-8OCLC 953133374)^[31]

• Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law (2021, W. W. Norton & Company;ISBN 978-1-324-00193-5OCLC 1233265880)

• Official website
• Appearances onC-SPAN
• Interview by Adam Savage