Los Angeles freelance science writer and editor
The day you decide to leave your adopted country as an expat is as memorable as the day you arrived. My plan for a research sabbatical at a university in Norway was to stay as long as money allowed me. The not-a-plan plan. I left the USA for Norway with no concrete ending date and... Continue Reading →
A line I read from an essay a few years ago claims no one tells you the protagonist in your first novel is you but with a better personal life. At the time, I was trying to write a draft of a novel. I had no idea I was writing a book about me until... Continue Reading →
I don’t remember not liking driving so much. I had my own car for about 20 years and was often the designated driver. I drove from my home in Chicago to school in Baltimore, and back, with my car. And I drove from my apartment to the downtown campus daily for my graduate work. My... Continue Reading →
I’ve been living in the Los Angeles area for almost a decade now. To what end I didn’t know - it's too expensive - other than I live close to the beach, the airport and my brother. But then his daughter was born. Being an aunt who lives so close is the luckiest of situations.... Continue Reading →
The standard sterile classroom environment-fluorescent lights, pale yellow paint on cinder block walls, a blackboard-emphasized the drudgery ahead for learning a language. It was also January, the darkest part of the year, the rainiest part of the year, when I began Norwegian class in Folkeuniversitetet in the Bergen city center on the southwest coast of... Continue Reading →
You never know how Christmas is going to fall out. Even with the simplest of plans. A few days before Christmas, my brother’s wife panicked about the prosciutto crudo, the cured ham sliced from, depending on the source, a special breed of pig legs. The Bristol Farms in the area had closed, and it was... Continue Reading →
Slump City these days in my creative life. Even my painting has fallen out of its orbit. And the one little painting I sold got held up in the mail for over two weeks. I panicked, imagined an original work of art lying on a cold dirty floor or blowing like a discarded plastic bag... Continue Reading →
It's that time of year again, the Easy Reader News writing and photo contest. I didn't win, but they published my story and my photo. It's really about how art is not so easy even though it might look simple.
The revelation after my six years of study and lab work to complete a PhD in biology is that I wasn’t on an automatic path to career fulfillment, or happiness. And I had an envious PhD experience. My principal investigator had a clear vision. He was so sure about his goals that our only problem... Continue Reading →
My idea of a digital nomad: running an international business from my computer in a country where I could afford to have a small cottage by the sea. After returning from my seven-year stint abroad in Norway, I thought I would stay in the USA until I got my editing and writing business going and... Continue Reading →
Janice Nigro 