Meehan Crist

Meehan Crist is writer-in-residence in Biological Sciences at Columbia University. Previously she was editor-at-large at Nautilus and reviews editor at the Believer. Her work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the New Republic, The Nation, the London Review of Books, Tin House, Nautilus, Scientific American, and Science. Her other awards include the 2016 AOA Award for excellence in Health Journalism, the Olive B. O'Connor Fellowship, and fellowships from MacDowell, The Blue Mountain Center, Ucross, and Yaddo. Her work was recently selected for Best American Science and Nature Writing 2021. She is the host of Convergence: a show about the future.

The Value of Support

"The value of the Rona Jaffe Writer's Award is wickedly hard to quantify. How do you measure the peace of mind afforded by financial relief? What might have gone unwritten? What risks might have gone untaken? I know that after receiving the award I was able to make creative decisions less clouded by financial concerns, and driven more by the desire to make what feels meaningful. As a woman writer, the award was particularly valuable as it had a tremendous positive influence on the time/money/childcare equation of new motherhood."