Emily Monosson

Background

About Emily Monosson

I am an environmental toxicologist and writer. Newest book: Blight: Fungus And The Coming Pandemic,(W.W. Norton Press, July 2023.) My last book was Natural Defense: Enlisting Bugs and Germs to Protect Our Food and Medicine (Island Press 2017). Several years ago I wrote Evolution in a Toxic World: how life responds to chemical hazards (Island Press, April 2012) as a way to provoke toxicologists and others to think about how life's toxic defense systems evolved, and what we can learn from that background in today's world. I remain interested in evolution and toxicology and would love to see this become a part of toxicology. I am a member of the Ronin Institute for Independent Scholars and an adjunct faculty at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. As a science-mom who chose not to follow the traditional career path, I've also become interested in how other science-moms balance career and family. This resulted in an edited volume of essays, Motherhood, the Elephant in the Laboratory: women scientists speak out, published by Cornell University Press. Specialties: Data analysis and synthesis, report writing, translating science for the public.