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Mary Roach

4.60

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Mary Roach, born March 20, 1959, is an American author specializing in popular science and humor. She has published six New York Times bestsellers: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers 2003, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife 2005, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex 2008, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void 2010, Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal 2013 and Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War 2016.

Mary Roach was born in Hanover, New Hampshire. Her family moved to Etna, a village in Hanover, and Roach attended Hanover High School and received a bachelor's degree in psychology from Wesleyan University in 1981. 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.

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, 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," 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. In this community, Roach got the push she needed to break into book writing. While being interviewed by Alex C. Telander of BookBanter, Roach answered the question of how she got started on her first book:

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4.6

Packing for Mars

Jon Stewart
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