Maryn McKenna is a journalist and author who specializes in public health, global health and food policy.

 
She has reported from a field hospital in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, a village on Thailand's west coast that was erased by the Indian Ocean tsunami, a CDC team investigating the anthrax-letter attacks on Capitol Hill, a bird catching and testing unit during the first advance of West Nile virus, a graveyard within the Arctic Circle that held victims of the 1918 flu, a malaria hospital in Malawi, an isolation ward for multi-drug resistant TB in Vietnam and a polio-eradication team in India — and from quarantine stations, laboratories, sex clubs, and farms.

She blogs for Wired, is a columnist and contributing editor for Scientific American, and writes for magazines and medical journals in the United States, Europe and Asia — most recently, Slate, SELF, Nature, The Atlantic, and The Guardian. She is the author of SUPERBUG: The Fatal Menace of MRSA and BEATING BACK THE DEVIL: On the Front Lines with the Disease Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, and is working on a book about food production. 

Maryn is a Senior Fellow of the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. She teaches science writing in the United States and Asia, and is a frequent speaker and radio and TV guest.

"Maryn McKenna is unmatched in reporting and contextualizing infectious-disease news with stories that’ll scare the antibodies out of you."
- David Dobbs, Slate

"Maryn McKenna is like a living arrow, fired straight into the heart of the 'blogging isn’t journalism' meme."
- Ed Yong, Phenomena/National Geographic

"Why is curbing antibiotic use so critical? Read Maryn McKenna."
- Mark Bittman, The New York Times