Nancy Bazilchuk
[resume] [articles I’ve written] [papers I've edited] [my book]
Johan E. Brodahlsvei 3
7049
Trondheim
NORWAY
tlf:+47 73 80 49 42
cell:+47 91 89 73
21
email:
nbazilchuk@alum.mit.edu
Articles by category:
Nancy Bazilchuk, science and environmental writer and editor
about me
I am a freelance science writer and editor now based in Trondheim, Norway. Most recently, my work has appeared in New Scientist magazine, and I've been editing science papers and magazine articles written in English by Norwegians. In the fall of 2003 I taught scientific writing full-time to roughly 70 PhD science and engineering students at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. I've only just begun a full-time freelance career -- until July, 2002, I had spent 14 of the last 16 years at The Burlington Free Press, Vermont's largest newspaper. Twelve of those years were spent as the paper's environmental and science writer, along with a two-year stint as editorial writer and acting editorial page editor.
My environmental beat included topics such as global warming, land use controversies, biodiversity, invasive species, hazardous waste sites and water quality. I've also written about biomedical research, medicine and health, and covered a smattering of breaking news stories, from floods to fires to debates in the Vermont Legislature. I also had a twice-monthly nature column.
While at the Free Press, I wrote more than 160 news and features articles a year. A series I wrote about the flawed science behind the proposed clean-up of Vermont’s first Superfund hazardous waste site won an AAAS/Westinghouse Science Journalism Award in 1993. (The awards are now sponsored by the Whittaker Foundation.) I’ve also won national investigative reporting and writing awards from the Free Press’s parent company, Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain, and a smattering of specialty reporting awards.
In 1996, I won a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I spent the academic year of 1996-1997 on sabbatical from the Free Press, studying with scientists at MIT and Harvard. My focus was global warming, biochemistry and chemical fate and transport.
In 1999, I co-authored a 338-page natural history guide to Vermont, The Longstreet Highroad Guide to the Vermont Mountains. Other freelance efforts include publications in AMC Outdoors, Sea Kayaker Magazine and Northern Woodlands.
One of my proudest professional achievements outside of the office has been the volunteer work I''ve done for my (now former) town’s library. In 2000, I was elected to the town of Richmond, Vermont's volunteer board of library trustees, where I headed up a $450,000 capital campaign to renovate and expand the library's 19th century historic structure. I wrote grants and fundraising appeals to help make the renovation a reality. When I started on the board, the trustees had raised about $100,000. My last official act as chair of the trustees in June, 2002, was a groundbreaking ceremony to begin the renovation. Part of the fundraising included forming a partnership with Trey Anastasio, lead guitarist for the band Phish. Trey, a Richmond resident, made a substantial contribution to the project and will also fund a music school for area children to be housed in the library's meeting rooms and community space.
While in Norway, I'm branching out from my traditional areas of expertise to document what it is like to move a family overseas. We have a fairly casual and not very fancy family website, if you want to look at photos that document our first few weeks here spent traveling around our new home. A move from left-leaning, green Vermont to a social democracy like Norway is like moving to paradise -- but with strings attached. I’ve written a series of essays documenting my first impressions of our new home; most of these essays take the form of long e-mails to friends, and a series of e-mails to my 8-year-old daughter Zoe’s former 2nd grade classmates, so you'll have to ignore the exclamation points.
Here’s the family
in Sept., 2002 trying not to be blown off the top of Snøhetta, one of
Norway’s highest mountains.
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material copyright © 2003 Nancy Bazilchuk