Los Angeles freelance science writer and editor
You never know when one of those odd skills you have acquired is going to help you make a connection with someone. Like speaking Norwegian. I tried to learn the language, to speak with the natives, but I hardly needed to use it even in Norway. On a flight to Munich from Los Angeles? I... Continue Reading →
I didn’t go to Norway to learn Norwegian, but almost everything good that happened to me in Norway was somehow connected to Norwegian class. A German colleague once said, “Where else do you meet people in this country but in Norwegian class?” I think my life is still driven by what happened to me in... Continue Reading →
The funnest person I get to talk to right now is my three-year old niece. Conversations are about eating, playing and sleeping. We don’t always agree, but she’s a grand diversion from the junk that comes out of the mouths of adults today who get paid millions to say it. When she speaks – she’s... Continue Reading →
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 →
American Ava Alemagna, an expat working as a cancer researcher at a university in Norway, discovers a cancer causing genetic mutation in a tribe of islanders in Indonesia. Her science and scuba diving lives collide when a Norwegian philanthropist and CEO of a centuries-old family ship building business funds her work and builds her an unprecedented... 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 →
Janice Nigro 