My reporting on science and the environment has won several national journalism honors, including the Walter Sullivan Award for Excellence in Science Journalism, an AAAS Science Journalism Award, the Media Award from the American Institute of Biological Sciences, three awards from the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and a finalist nod for the National Academies Communication Award. My writing has also been included in the anthologies Best American Science Writing and Best American Science and Nature Writing.

My reporting trips take me throughout the western United States, northern Mexico and beyond, and my research has been supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

I'm aided in many tangible and intangible ways by my husband Jackson Perrin -- teacher, carpenter, and scrounger extraordinaire -- who built both our house and my office out of straw bales, and installed the panels that keep my writing solar-powered. Our daughter Sylvia Wren, born in September 2008, keeps everything in perspective.

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