Dr. Katie Burke
Katie Burke is a scientist-turned-writer and an award-winning editor for American Scientist. For six years, she studied the history and conservation biology of the iconic American chestnut, which was lost from eastern forests in North America in the early 20th century. But science only told part of that story. To learn why the rest felt untold and unresolved, she became a writer, editor, and storyteller. Second Growth is about unearthing the stories that she long sensed needed to be told about what happens to places and people when trees die.
Lisa Tossey
Lisa Tossey serves as a communications manager for Global Fishing Watch, where she focuses on storytelling about their innovative work using data to support a sustainable ocean through increased transparency. Previously, she was the assistant director of communications for Maryland Sea Grant, where she oversaw a team who reports on issues surrounding the Chesapeake Bay watershed and local communities , including a award-winning journal that highlights those topics, Chesapeake Quarterly. She started her work in immersive storytelling through her graduate work in multiplatform journalism at University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism. She currently lives in Berlin, Maryland, where she spends her free time hiking, beachcombing, and kayaking, with her husband, artist Matthew Amey, three rescue dogs, and two very large horses.
Bethann Garramon Merkle, MFA
commnatural.com & ecologicallytruestory.org
Bethann Garramon Merkle is an artist, writer, and science communication researcher/trainer based in Wyoming. Her work explores the role stories play in people’s understandings of and relationships to the natural world. She is a Professor of Practice in the Department of Zoology and Physiology at the University of Wyoming (UW) and the founding director of the UW Science Communication Initiative. As a scicomm researcher, instructor, and practitioner, she emphasizes transdisciplinary approaches to enhance public engagement with science and in-form institutional change. Her work has focused on a variety of topics including art-science integration, efficacy of scicomm training, and systemic change to enhance and facilitate scicomm and transdisciplinary, applied research. Her award-winning work has been published in several books and her artwork and 300+ articles have run in outlets including including American Scientist, BC Naturalist, BioScience, Camas, Ecology and Society, Fair Chase, Mother Earth News, Nature, The Journal of Wildlife Management, Science, and Western Confluence.