The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2023

Award-winning writer, columnist, and journalists Carl Zimmer selects twenty science and nature essays that represent the best examples of the form published in 2022.

 “What's most compelling about a scientific story is the way it challenges us to think about the concepts we take for granted,” writes guest editor Carl Zimmer in his introduction. The essays in this year’s Best American Science and Nature Writing probe at the ordinary and urge us to think more deeply about our place in the world around us. From a hopeful portrait of a future for people with Alzheimer’s disease, to a fascinating exploration of the rise of nearsightedness in children, to the heroic story of a herd of cows that evaded a hurricane, these selections reveal how science and nature shape our everyday lives. With tremendous intelligence, clarity, and insight, this anthology offers an expansive look at where we are and where we are headed.

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2023 includes JESSICA CAMILLE AGUIRRE • VANESSA GREGORY • SABRINA IMBLER FERRIS JABR • MARION RENAULT • ELIZABETH SVOBODA NATALIE WOLCHOVER • SARAH ZHANG and others  

CARL ZIMMER, guest editor, writes the Origins column for the New York Times. He is the author of fourteen books, including Life’s Edge and She Has Her Mother’s Laugh, both of which were finalists for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. Zimmer has written for magazines including The Atlantic, National Geographic, Time, and Scientific American. He has won the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Science Journalism Award three times, and is a two-time winner of the National Academies Communication Award. Zimmer is professor adjunct at Yale University

Jaime Green, series editor, is a science writer and essayist. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Aeon, Slate, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Astrobites, and elsewhere. She is the author of The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos.