Mary Roach | |
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.jpg) Roach in 2025 | |
| Born | (1959-03-20)March 20, 1959 (age 66) |
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| Nationality | US |
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Mary Roach (born March 20, 1959) is an American author specializing inpopular science andhumor.[1] She has published eightNew 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),Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law (2021), andReplaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy (2025).
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Mary Roach was born inHanover, New Hampshire.[2] She was raised inEtna,[3] a village within the town of Hanover. Both her parents worked atDartmouth College.[2]
Roach attendedHanover High School and was a straight-A student.[4] She graduated fromWesleyan University in 1981[3][5] with abachelor's degree inpsychology.[2]
After college, Roach moved toSan Francisco,California,[3] 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.[6]
She has written essays and feature articles for such publications asVogue,GQ,The New York Times Magazine,Discover Magazine,National Geographic,Outside Magazine, andWired[5][7] as well as columns forSalon.com In Health ("Stitches"),Reader's Digest ("My Planet"), andSports Illustrated for Women ("The Slightly Wider World of Sports"),[5] 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.[8] While being interviewed by Alex C. Telander ofBookBanter, Roach described 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.[9]
Although Roach writes primarily about science, she never intended to make it her career. Roach stated in an interview withTheVerge.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."[10]
Roach has appeared on numerous television and radio programs includingThe Daily Show,[11]The Colbert Report,[12]Coast to Coast AM,[13] National Public Radio'sFresh Air,[14] andC-SPAN2Book TV'sIn Depth.[15] Her 2009TED talk[16] "Ten Things You Didn't Know About Orgasm",[17] made the organization's list of its most popular talks of all time.[18]
Roach has reviewed 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[19] and an advisor forOrion magazine.[20] She has been an Osher Fellow[21] at theSan Francisco Exploratorium and has served on the Usage Panel of theAmerican Heritage Dictionary.[22]
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.[23]
Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife was aNew York Times Bestseller and was listed as aNew York Times Notable Books pick in 2005.Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, 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.[24] 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.[25]Packing for Mars was also sixth on theNew York Times Bestseller list.[26]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.[27]
Roach was the recipient of theHarvard Secular Society's Rushdie Award[28] in 2012 for her outstanding lifetime achievement in culturalhumanism. The same year, she received a Special Citation inscientific inquiry fromMaximum Fun. "The Bamboo Solution", her article onearthquake-proofbamboo houses,[29] took the American Engineering Societies Engineering Journalism Award in the general interest magazine category in 1996. Roach's article "How to Win at Germ Warfare"[30] was aNational Magazine Award finalist in 1995.[31]
Roach resides and works inOakland, California,[2] as of 2023[update], where she continues to write.[32] She arrived in California shortly after graduating college, having driven toSan Francisco with friends.[3][2][5]
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