Posts by Trevor Corson
May workshop coming up
Save the date for our next dinner salon and workshop meeting on the evening of Thursday, 8 May. If you have a project in progress on which you’d like to get feedback, please contact the director! Image: Yulia Gapeenko, Vecteezy.
Read MoreStorytelling or spinning narratives—what’s the difference?
On 28 March 2025, NeuWrite Nordic director Trevor Corson met with the University of Helsinki branch of the international ReproducibiliTea journal club to discuss the downside of narratives in science. Bias and the spinning of results have become endemic, especially in medical research. What, actually, are the differences between justified storytelling to convey robust scientific…
Read MoreCan extremophiles save the cat? Using “story grid”
Structuring stories Telling science stories can take the basic form of a “why / how / what” presentation, or the more ambitious form of a “story grid”, like the kind that bestselling writers use in nonfiction books, thrillers, and Hollywood films—one popular version is the “Save the Cat” technique of gridding out a story from…
Read MoreScientific genius—or not?
How do we as a society figure out if scientific genius is the real thing? What role should science writers play in celebrating or critiquing apparent scientific brilliance? What happens if we get it wrong? One of the most celebrated polymath geniuses of 20th-century America was the cosmologist/physicist/environmentalist/architect Buckminster Fuller. Yet doubts remain whether Fuller…
Read MoreBioracism reborn?
Many science bloggers and writers put their thoughts into the form of essays that discuss a new book, or several new books where the writer sees a theme. We studied an example of this kind of book-review essay this month to see how such essays can work, especially in terms of structure and argument. The…
Read MoreBrain, mind, and science communication—panel discussion
NeuWrite Nordic director Trevor Corson discussed journalism, storytelling, and creative writing about science as part of a panel discussion on science communication, during the concluding event of the Brain & Mind Symposium in Helsinki on October 25. The panel brought together a rich mix of perspectives from: eNeuro, the journal of the Society for Neuroscience—panelist:…
Read MoreThe intersection of science and literature
We had a special treat at our dinner salon and workshop meeting this month: Iida Turpeinen, one of Finland’s leading thinkers and practitioners in the transdisciplinary space between science and literature, joined us to discuss a section of the forthcoming English translation of her 2023 natural-history book Beasts of the Sea (Fin. Elolliset), which won…
Read MorePoetry performance / art exhibition explores scientific ideas
NeuWrite Nordic participant, doctoral researcher from the University of Helsinki’s Neuroscience Center, and internationally published writer, poet and visual artist Rakenduvadhana Srinivasan will perform her original poetry as part of the Surrealism Festival at Yö Gallery in Helsinki, where her art will be on sale and projected (see the neuroscience-themed work above). Titled “Inexorable filaments…
Read MoreArticle about surgical fads and secret agents published
Perhaps it was a stretch to compare the rise and fall of medical techniques with the love life of James Bond, but that’s exactly the origin of one of the more memorable charts to have appeared in the British Medical Journal. For the first time, the full story of the comparison, and the connection to…
Read MoreClimate action novel published
“Engrossing, insightful, and entirely credible.” —Markku Kulmala University of Helsinki Academy Professor and atmospheric scientist “Frighteningly believable.” —Kati Halonen, poet At NeuWrite Nordic we’ve workshopped several sections of a novel about climate change, in which dramatic scenes of destruction and chaos have stripped away the polite politicking of national leaders and climate scientists…
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