Writers
Award winners whose work is featured in Showcase
David Heath
Independent Journalist
David Heath is an independent journalist whose work has appeared on PBS Frontline, the CBS Evening News, the Huffington Post, the Daily Beast, TheAtlantic.com and Time.com. He formerly worked at CNN, the Center for Public Integrity and the Seattle Times. In recent years, he has covered the environment, toxic chemicals and scientific integrity. He appeared in the Netflix documentary series “Dirty Money.” He’s won numerous national prizes, including the Goldsmith, Polk and Loeb awards. His story “Meet the ‘Rented White Coats’ Who Defend Toxic Chemicals” (featured on Showcase) won a NASW Science in Society Journalism Award in 2017. He is a three-time Pulitzer finalist for work he did with others. He was a Nieman fellow and taught journalism at the University of Washington and Harvard’s extension school.
Eva Hershaw
Freelance Journalist
Eva Hershaw is a freelance journalist currently living in Italy. She holds two master’s degrees in journalism and Latin American studies and spent much of her career researching and reporting on agriculture, rural development and food systems in North, Central and South America. As a journalist, her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Texas Monthly, VICE News and Al Jazeera America, among others. Her story “When the Dust Settles” (featured on Showcase) won the National Association of Science Writers’ Science in Society Award in 2017. She is currently a land monitoring and data specialist with the International Land Coalition.
Mike Hixenbaugh
Investigative Reporter
Mike Hixenbaugh is an investigative reporter focused on exposing fraud and abuse in health care. Previously, he was a reporter at The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., where his work on the military and veterans affairs was co-published with ProPublica, NBC News and the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley. His story “Alive Inside” (featured on Showcase) won the AAAS Kavli award in 2018. Mike graduated from the University of Akron in 2007 before going to work for newspapers in Ohio and then North Carolina.
Courtney Humphries
Freelance journalist
Courtney Humphries is a freelance journalist and author who writes about science, health, nature, and the built environment. She was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT for 2015-2016, and her work has appeared in the Boston Globe, Nautilus, MIT Technology Review, New Scientist, Nature, Science, Harvard Magazine, and other publications. She’s the author of Superdove: How the Pigeon Took Manhattan….And the World, a natural history of pigeons published by Smithsonian Books. Her story “Where Forests Work Harder” (featured on Showcase) recently won the David Perlman Award granted by the American Geophysical Union. She’s an alum of MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing and has recently returned to school as a PhD student in environmental science and Coasts & Communities IGERT fellow at University of Massachusetts Boston, studying urban sustainability and climate change adaptation. Follow her on Twitter @cehumphries.
Sabrina Imbler
Science Writer
Sabrina Imbler is a writer for Defector, a worker-owned sports and culture site, where they write about creatures and the natural world. They are the author of the essay collection How Far the Light Reaches, which won the 2022 LA Times Book Prize, and the chapbook Dyke (geology), which was selected by the National Book Foundation for the Science + Literature program. Imbler received the Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award for Young Science Journalists in 2022 (one of their award-winning stories, “Started Out as a Fish. How Did It End Up Like This?” is featured on Showcase), and their work has appeared in three editions of the Best American Science and Nature Writing. Photo credit: Marion Aguas.
George Johnson
Reporter
George Johnson is the author of nine books, most recently The Cancer Chronicles. A former reporter and editor at The New York Times, he has written for National Geographic, Slate, Scientific American, Wired, The Atlantic, and other publications, and writes the monthly column Raw Data for The Times. He is co-founder of the Santa Fe Science Writing Workshop. His New York Times Sunday Review story “Why Everyone Seems to Have Cancer” (featured on Showcase) was part of a package that won the 2014 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award in the Large Newspaper category. Follow Johnson on Twitter @byGeorgeJohnson.
Mark Johnson
Health and Science Writer
Mark Johnson, a health and science writer at The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, shared the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting and has been a finalist on three other occasions. He and Business Reporter Kathleen Gallagher are co-authors of the new book, “One in a Billion: The story of Nic Volker and the Dawn of Genomic Medicine,” an expansion of their Pulitzer Prize-winning series. His Journal Sentinel story “The Course of Their Lives” (featured on Showcase) won CASW’s Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting in 2015 for the newspaper category.
Maria Konnikova
Author and Contributing Writer
Maria Konnikova is the author of two New York Times bestsellers, The Confidence Game, winner of the 2016 Robert P. Balles Prize in Critical Thinking; and Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes, an Anthony and Agatha Award finalist. She is a contributing writer for The New Yorker and is currently working on a book about poker and the balance of skill and luck in life, The Biggest Bluff, to be published in 2019 by Penguin Press. Having amassed over $230,000 in poker tournament earnings within one year and captured a major poker title during research for her upcoming book, in July 2018, Maria joined PokerStars Team Pro as an official ambassador. Her story “Altered Tastes” featured on Showcase was also featured in Best American Science and Nature Writing. Maria also hosts the podcast The Grift with Panoply Media, a show that explores con artists and the lives they ruin, and is currently a visiting fellow at NYU’s School of Journalism. She graduated from Harvard University and received her PhD in psychology from Columbia University. Follow her on Twitter @mkonnikova.
Matthew D. LaPlante
Journalist • Assistant Professor
Matthew D. LaPlante has reported from more than a dozen nations for publications including CNN.com, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Daily News and The Salt Lake Tribune, the last of which he served as national security reporter from 2005 to 2011. A dedicated soccer fan and avid snowboarder, LaPlante is an assistant professor of journalism at Utah State University, where he teaches news writing, narrative non-fiction and crisis reporting. His Salt Lake City Weekly story “Devastated” (featured on Showcase) won the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award in 2014 for the small newspaper category.
Usha Lee McFarling
National Science Correspondent, STAT
Usha Lee McFarling is a national science correspondent for STAT, covering health disparities and the intersection of race with science and medicine. She previously reported for the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, and the San Antonio Light. Her work on the diseased state of the world’s oceans earned the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism and her coverage of health disparities has earned an Edward R. Murrow award as well as awards from the Association of Health Care Journalists and the Asian American Journalists Association. In 2024 she was awarded CASW’s Victor Cohn Prize for excellence in medical science reporting and the Bernard Lo, MD award in bioethics. One of her stories recognized by the Cohn Prize judges, which documents how white scholars overstepped scholars of color in the newly popular field of health equity research, is featured on Showcase.
