Mary Roach

• Name — Mary Roach • Born — 20 March 1959 • Birthplace — Hanover, New Hampshire, US • Occupation — * Author • humorist • Genre — * Popular science • humor • Website — maryroach.net

Mary Roach was born in Hanover, New Hampshire.[2] She was raised in Etna,[3] a village within the town of Hanover. Both her parents worked at Dartmouth College. Roach attended Hanover High School and was a straight-A student.[4] She graduated from Wesleyan University in 1981 with a bachelor's degree in psychology.

After college, Roach moved to San Francisco, California, and spent a few years working as a freelance copy editor. Her writing career began in the public affairs office of the San Francisco Zoological Society, producing press releases on topics such as wart surgery on elephants. On her days off from the SFZS, she wrote freelance articles for San Francisco Chronicle's Sunday magazine, Image.[5] She has written essays and feature articles for such publications as Vogue, GQ, The New York Times Magazine, Discover Magazine, National Geographic, Outside Magazine, and Wired[6] as well as columns for Salon.com In Health ("Stitches"), Reader's Digest ("My Planet"), and Sports Illustrated for Women ("The Slightly Wider World of Sports"),[7] and Inc.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 of BookBanter, 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 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."[10] Roach has appeared on numerous television and radio programs including The Daily Show,[11] The Colbert Report,[12] Coast to Coast AM,[13] National Public Radio's Fresh Air,[14] and C-SPAN2 Book TV's In Depth.[15] Her 2009 TED 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] • Illustration — Roach floats weightlessly on a parabolic flight while researching Packing For Mars Roach has reviewed books for The New York Times and was the guest editor of the Best American Science and Nature Writing 2011 edition. She also serves as a member of the Mars Institute's Advisory Board, as an ambassador for Mars One[19] and an advisor for Orion magazine.[20] She has been an Osher Fellow[21] at the San Francisco Exploratorium and has served on the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary.[22]

Roach resides and works in Oakland, California, where she continues to write.[32] She arrived in California shortly after graduating college, having driven to San Francisco with friends.

• Illustration — Roach at TED 2009 • Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2003, W. W. Norton & Company) • Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife (2005, W. W. Norton & Company) • Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (2008, W. W. Norton & Company) • Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void (2010, W. W. Norton & Company) • The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2011 (editor, 2010, Mariner Books) • Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal (2013, W. W. Norton & Company) • My Planet: Finding Humor in the Oddest Places (2013, Penguin Publishing) • Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War (2016, W. W. Norton & Company) • Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law (2021, W. W. Norton & Company) • Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy (2025, W. W. Norton & Company)

Mary Roach is recorded as medical author, writer and journalist.