I am a freelance journalist and the editor of What We Didn’t Expect: Personal Stories of Premature Birth (Melville House, Nov. 2020). I live with my husband, son, cat, dog, and a growing collection of unusual plants in the Washington, D.C., area.
My work is represented by Eric Smith at P.S. Literary Agency.
As a freelance journalist, I have reported from every inhabited continent.
But my greatest challenge came when my son was born two and a half months early. In order to help other families get through premature birth, I brought together sixteen other writers to discuss their diverse experiences in What We Didn’t Expect: Personal Stories of Premature Birth (Melville House, Nov. 2020).
Biography
My work has been published by The Washington Post, The New Republic, The Guardian, Wired, The Atlantic, Pacific Standard, New York magazine, NPR, STAT News, Outside, and elsewhere — here’s my full portfolio.
I’m also the D.C. correspondent for ArcticToday, where I cover climate change, geopolitics, gender, and more in the circumpolar North.
My newsletter, Not a Doctor, covers health, science, and parenting during a pandemic.
I reported on health and gender in Rwanda in 2019 on a reporting fellowship with the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF). As a journalism fellow with the GroundTruth Project in 2015-16, I reported first on the Paris climate agreement and then on the relationship between climate change and mental health in the Scandinavian and Canadian Arctic. One of those articles, for Pacific Standard, was selected as a Notable mention in Best American Science and Nature Writing 2019.
I have spoken on CNN, C-SPAN Radio, and Feature Story News, and Working Mother wrote about my email signature and efforts to balance working parenthood.
Previously, I worked as a program manager and communications director at the International Reporting Project (IRP) for six years, and before that I was an assistant editor at the Woodrow Wilson Center. Before that, I worked at a tire shop, a telemarketing bank, a motorcycle shop, and food and retail businesses. (Sometimes simultaneously.)
I received my bachelor’s degree in English and linguistics from Georgetown University, and my master’s degree in writing from the Johns Hopkins University. As an alumna, I helped to teach science policy courses for Hopkins’ graduate science writing program in 2019 and 2020.
Melody Schreiber 