Susan Cohen is a freelance writer in Berkeley, California. She’s been a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, a contributing writer to the Washington Post Magazine, and a full-time faculty member of the University of California Graduate School of Journalism. Among her many journalism honors, she’s won the Science in Society Award from the National Association of Science Writers and a John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University. Also an award-winning poet, she has two grown children and lives with her husband, Robert R. Youngs, an earthquake engineer.