Two Colorado State University graduates are key contributors to a prestigious anthology of the nation’s top long-form nonfiction. The 2015 edition of The Best American Science and Nature Writing is published by Houghton Mifflin Publishing Company. This year’s book is the 16th annual collection.

The book includes an essay about “an eternal electric day” written by Journalism and Media Communication alumna Rebecca (Waddingham) Boyle (’03). Boyle is a St. Louis-based freelance science writer, former newspaper reporter and former editor-in-chief of the Rocky Mountain Collegian. Her essay “The Health Effects of a World Without Darkness” was first published by Aeon Magazine online. It explores the impact on humans of a world where electricity creates 24-hour-a-day light.

Boyle’s work was selected as a finalist for the collection by the anthology’s series editor, but it ultimately was selected for publication by another CSU alumna who also is a freelance science writer and who has the same first name as Boyle. Rebecca Skloot (’97) was guest editor of this year’s collection. As guest editor, she selected the stories included in the anthology and wrote the introduction. Skloot is a CSU biology graduate and, like Boyle, her science writing is widely published in national magazines. But Skloot is best known for her  New York Times #1 bestseller “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,”  a book that earned dozens of national awards and is soon to be made into an HBO movie.

As proven by both CSU graduates, science and nature nonfiction has a clear place in the national appetite for quality, in-depth writing. Students who are interested in pursuing this path will be interested in the JMC Department’s academic minor in Technical and Science Communication.