Melinda Wenner Moyer

Melinda Wenner Moyer is a contributing editor at Scientific American magazine and a regular contributor — and former columnist — at The New York Times. Her first book, How To Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes, was published in July 2021 and won a gold medal in the 2022 Living Now Book Awards. Her second book, Hello Cruel World!: Science-Based Strategies for Raising Terrific Kids in Terrifying Times, will be published on May 27, 2025. She also writes the popular Substack parenting newsletter Now What.

Moyer was the recipient of the 2022 Excellence in Science Journalism award from The Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the 2019 Bricker Award for Science Writing in Medicine, and her work was featured in the 2020 Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology. Moyer’s work has won first place prizes in the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism, the Folio Eddie Awards and the Annual Writing Awards of the American Society of Journalists and Authors. It has also been shortlisted for a James Beard Journalism Award, a National Academy of Sciences Communication Award and a National Magazine Award.

Moyer is a former faculty member in the Science, Health & Environmental Reporting program at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. She has a master’s in Science, Health & Environmental Reporting from NYU and a background in cell and molecular biology. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.