Los Angeles freelance science writer and editor
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 →
by Janice Nigro People stared at Ava as she wandered through the market, even though westerners were common in Sorong. The island city grew up around the international business of oil and natural resources, and was becoming a point of entry and disembarkation for divers destined for Raja Ampat. The airport was no longer a... 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. Here's the link: Behind every good photo is a good story.
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 →
Slow and travel are two words that don’t seem to belong together. But slow travel is a philosophy, an attitude. It’s the kind of travel where you stay in one place for a while to know it rather than the touch and go style of travel where you say you’ve been everywhere but leave your heart... Continue Reading →
I’m about to launch a second book. On my own. In just a few days. It’s a little more than a collection of some of my travel essays and stories I’ve been posting on my blog. A few stories are "new". Some I cover without enough detail, maybe because there’s too much there to write... Continue Reading →
Someone asked me after I got vaccinated why I got vaccinated. I have science based reasons (as a biologist, I get asked a lot)-that the technology has been around for a couple of decades, it’s been used safely for other infectious diseases and cancer, and it’s less of a risk than getting COVID. But I follow... Continue Reading →
Janice Nigro 