Writing for General Audiences
Winner, 2021 Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Winner, 2022 Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science
Winner, 2022 Josephine A. Miles Literary Award, PEN/Oakland
Winner, 2022 National Academies Schmidt Awards for Excellence in Science Communication
Finalist, 2022 PEN/E.O. Wilson Award for Literary Science Writing
Finalist, 2021 New England Book Award
Finalist, 2021 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize
Longlisted, 2022 OCM Bocas Prize in Caribbean Literature
A Smithsonian Magazine Best Science Book of 2021
A Symmetry Magazine Top 10 Physics Book of 2021
An Entropy Magazine Best Nonfiction Book of 2020-2021
A Publishers Weekly Best Nonfiction Book of the Year
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2021
A Booklist Top 10 Sci-Tech Book of the Year
The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred, my popular science book which draws from my experience and knowledge as a Black woman theoretical physicist, is available from Bold Type Books in hardcover, paperback, audiobook, and eBook formats. It is available anywhere you can get books in English. Sign up below to get updates about the book! To reach my literary agent, contact Jessica Papin at Dystel, Goderich, & Bourret LLC. Contact Jocelynn Pedro at Hachette USA for publicity relating to The Disordered Cosmos.
From May 2016 to August 2018 I volunteered as Editor in Chief of The Offing, and I am the founder of The Offing's science department, Back of the Envelope.
You can find my monthly column at New Scientist, Field Notes from Space-Time. Below are many of my publications for the public, in addition to those which appear on my blog.
The Infinite Possibilities of Afrofuturism (Foreign Policy, June 2023)
The Importance of Citing Black Women in Physics (Physics World, March 2023)
Ann Nelson broke barriers — for herself and for those who’d come after her (PopSci, May 2022)
Racial and economic barriers kept Carolyn Beatrice Parker from realizing her full potential (PopSci, May 2022)
Edward A. Bouchet paved a path for generations of Black students (PopSci, May 2022)
Are Telescopes the Only Way to Find Dark Matter? (Scientific American, April 2022)
Harriet Tubman, Astronomer Extraordinaire (Ms. Magazine, February 2022)
Becoming Martian (The Baffler, January 2022)
No man is an island — the early days of the quantum revolution: review of Helgoland by Carlo Rovelli (Physics World, July 2021)
Science Shouldn’t Come at the Expense of Black Lives (Scientific American, June 2021)
Enter the Axion (American Scientist, May-June 2021)
The James Webb Space Telescope Needs to be Renamed (Scientific American, May 2021)
A Black Physicist is Borne Back Ceaselessly Into the Past (Catapult, March 2021)
The challenges faced by Black physicists (Physics World, November 2020)
Taking Responsibility: The Ethics of Being Black in Physics (Physics World and Physics Today joint online publication, October 2020)
Debatable: Can Kamala Harris tell us anything about the politics of Ava DuVernay? (with Lawrence Ware, Counterpunch, October 2020)
We Still Don’t Understand Physics, a review of Cosmological Koans: A Journey Into the Heart of Physics (Physics World, January 2020)
Creating a Shared Vocabulary: Intersectionality (APS Physics COM/CSWP Gazette, Fall 2019)
Connor Trinneer Finds the Humanity in Horror (StarTrek.com, November 2019)
Are we pressuring students to choose a hostile STEM? (Inside Higher Ed, October 2019)
Seeking Repentance in Star Trek (with help from MrProfChanda, StarTrek.com, October 2019)
The Rules of the Diversity and Inclusion Racket (The Riveter, September 2019)
Ann Nelson Took on the Biggest Problems in Physics (Quanta Magazine, August 2019)
Time Traveling Through the Trek Universe (StarTrek.com, August 2019)
‘Star Trek’ as a Philosophical Thought Experiment (StarTrek.com, August 2019)
'Physics of Trek' Teaches Physicists and Non-Scientists Alike (StarTrek.com, August 2019)
Holodeck-Inspired VR Transforms Conversation About Diversity (StarTrek.com, August 2019)
In ‘House of Quark,’ the Devil’s in the Details (StarTrek.com, August 2019)
The Fight for Mauna Kea is a Fight Against Colonial Science (The Nation, July 2019)
Dear Chandra: How X-rays became the bright spot in my sky (NationalGeographic.com, June 2019)
Particle Physics is Doing Just Fine (with Tim Tait, Slate, January 2019)
Grad school activism, while often necessary, isn't a substitute for technical proficiency (Inside Higher Education, January 2019)
The Legacy of Cold War Science Propaganda: a review of Audra Wolfe’s Freedom’s Laboratory (Physics Today, January 2019)
An Anxious Descent: a review of Anxiety and the Equation by Eric Johnson (Physics World, January 2019)
Kyung-Sook Shin, An Author Found in Translation (Shondaland, December 2018)
Sexual Misconduct Allegations against Neil deGrasse Tyson Reveal the Complexity of Academic Inequality (Scientific American, December 2018)
Finding Black Boy Joy In A World That Doesn't Want You To (Electric Literature, June 2018)
Toxic Masculine Cosmology: a review of Losing the Nobel Prize (Public Books, May 2018)
What a Massive New Study On Income Inequality Misses About Black Women (The Cut, March 2018)
Defying the Odds: Why Black Faculty Matter (Inside Higher Education, March 2018)
Star Trek: Hearing Women of Color in Space (with @MrDrChanda, Lady Science, February 2018)
Just Because It's "Science" Doesn't Mean It's Good (Slate, January 2018)
Mirroring Society, White Anxiety Reigns Supreme in the Literary World (Wear Your Voice, November 2017)
#ScientistsTakeAKnee Needs To Be About Black Lives (Slate, September 2017)
Scientists Must Challenge What Makes Studies Scientific (American Scientist Blog, August 2017)
Stop Equating "Science" With Truth (Slate, August 2017)
review of Dr. Edith Vane and the Hares of Crawley Hall: The Case for Black Women to Ditch Academia (Bitch, July 2017)
Can we disagree and still love each other? (Racebaitr, July 2017. This was a collaborative statement for which I was lead writer.)
Curiosity and the End of Discrimination (Nature Astronomy (paywall), free copy, June 2017)
PURITY IN A TRUMPED-UP WORLD: A conversation against purity with Alexis Shotwell (Bitch, Summer 2017 "Invisbility" issue)
"Black and Palestinian Lives Matter: Black and Jewish America in the Twenty-First Century" in On Antisemitism: Solidarity and the Struggle for Justice in Palestine (Haymarket Books, April 2017)
We Are The Scientists Against A Fascist Government (with Sarah Tuttle & Joseph Osmundson, The Establishment, February 2017)
Translating the Universe: Remembering Trailblazing Astronomer Vera Rubin (Bitch, January 2017)
Introduction to Hidden Human Computers: The Black Women of NASA (ABDO Publishing, December 2016)
Black Lives Matter, Taiwan's "228 Incident," and the Transnational Struggle for Liberation (Black Youth Project, December 2016)
The Physics of Melanin (appeared in Bitch, Winter 2016-17 "Chaos" print issue)
(contributor) Ko Kākou Struggle: 15 Voices on Where to Go Next (Ke Kaʻupu Hehi ʻAle, November 2016)
Finding the Right Boundaries (appeared in Physics World, October 2016)
Black Intellectual History and STEM: A Conversation with Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (AAIHS, August 2016)
How Do You Solve A Problem Like Cosmic Acceleration? (The Toast, May 2016)
Introduction to Literary Juneteenth (Or Why I Left The Offing) (The Offing, May 2016)
How Black Holes Saved Relativity (appeared in Physics World, February 2016)
Times Six: Finding a Language for Borders, Theft and History (with Kiese Laymon, Gawker, January 2015)
Saying it loud: Reflections on Racism at the Institute and Beyond (The Tech, December 2014, adapted from a May 2012 speech)
Ain't I a Woman? At the Intersection of Gender, Race, and Sexuality (Women in Astronomy, May 2014)
Pasadena (Is Greater Than, February 2010)
Getting Physicists to Invest in Caring, Not Killing: Who Takes Responsibility? (Is Greater Than, January 2008)
The lab coat and lone genius — science’s most infuriating stereotypes (New Scientist, May 2022)
Why I’m choosing dark matter over dark energy — for now at least (New Scientist, April 2022)
We mustn’t let billionaire rocket men decide what happens in space (New Scientist, March 2022)
Let’s hear it for the space Cinderellas — Earth-observing satellites (New Scientist, February 2022)
How does the sun shine? Here’s why we are still a little in the dark (New Scientist, January 2022)
My encounter with a different and deeply mysterious kind of corona (New Scientist, December 2021)
We’ll never understand the universe while we’re drowning in admin (New Scientist, December 2021)
Sterile neutrinos could explain dark matter — if we can find them (New Scientist, November 2021)
How the Hubble Telescope opened a new window on the cosmos (New Scientist, October 2021)
Scientists are often cautious or wrong — and that’s ok (New Scientist, September 2021)
Why it is so important to protect access to the dark night sky (New Scientist, August 2021)
The eternal debate about the eternal inflation of the universe (New Scientist, July 2021)
Why the big bang may not have been the beginning of the universe (New Scientist, June 2021)
Why there are still huge mysteries in supernova physics (New Scientist, May 2021)
Why the latest muon measurements are so tantalizing for physics (New Scientist, April 2021)
Neutrinos change their identities and we don’t know why (New Scientist, April 2021)
We may have to rewrite our understanding of gravity (New Scientist, March 2021)
Why the universe can be described by equations of fluids (New Scientist, February 2021)
How every galaxy comes from quantum fluctuations billions of years ago (New Scientist, January 2021)
Does a halo of mysterious dark matter swirl around every galaxy? (New Scientist, December 2020)
Why the vast emptiness of space isn’t really that empty after all (New Scientist, November 2020)
Climate Change and Big Tech are Jeopardising the Future of Astronomy (New Scientist, October 2020)
Could we jump into a wormhole to save us from the world at present? (New Scientist, September 2020)
Why dark matter should be called something else (New Scientist, August 2020)
Elements from the universe’s earliest stars gave birth to the sun (New Scientist, July 2020)
Why neutrinos are the strangest particles in the standard model (New Scientist, June 2020)
The strange physics of why blue jays look blue even though they aren’t (New Scientist, May 2020)
Astronomical time can help us put lockdown in perspective (New Scientist, April 2020)
We still don’t understand a basic fact about the universe (New Scientist, March 2020)
The atmosphere gets in the way of the universe’s most amazing objects (New Scientist, February 2020)
Are dark matter and dark energy related in anything apart from name? (New Scientist, January 2020)
Studying the universe’s origins hint that its beginning has no end (New Scientist, November 2019)
Dust is annoying but is key to life and death in the cosmos (New Scientist, October 2019)
Einstein’s black holes are not the black holes we see in reality (New Scientist, September 2019)
How the coolest, smallest stars could help us discover new exoplanets (New Scientist, August 2019)
Earth’s helium is running out and it has dire consequences for science (New Scientist, July 2019)
How Star Trek’s warp drives touch on one of physics’ biggest mysteries (New Scientist, June 2019)
Axions may or may not exist — but we’re not just making things up (New Scientist, May 2019)
Selections from my Medium Blog:
Let Astro | Physics Be The Dream It Used To Be (original & one year later)
Intersectionality as a Blueprint for Postcolonial Scientific Community Building
Surviving and Thriving: How to be an Underrepresented Minority astro/physics student: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 (series ongoing)
Reading Lists: