About me
I morphed from researcher to freelance writer in 2017 after publishing around 60 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters. Now I’ve completed my hairpin turn from academia and am writing a novel. It has an overarching theme of voluntary assisted dying laws and I’ve finished the first draft so watch this space.
Since becoming a writer at large, I have written more than 600 stories for public outlets, including regular contributions to The Guardian, Cosmos Magazine, Forbes Science, Nature Index, and Health Agenda Magazine. Other outlets include Ensia, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Washington Post, The New York Times (Australia Diary), The New Daily, Australia’s Science Channel, UniSA Enterprise Magazine, The Conversation, The QUO and Massive Science.
My freelance writing won me the Australasian Medical Writers Association’s 2019 Early Career Award and the Crawford Fund’s Food Security Journalism Award and two of my stories were selected for the Best Australian Science Writing 2019 and 2024 anthologies, respectively.
A convoluted career path equipped me for writing about a broad and often unexpectedly interrelated range of topics, enriched by a two-year Post Baccalaureate Certificate in Science Writing with Johns Hopkins University which kindled my appetite for narrative writing.
After gaining an Honours Psychology degree in 2002, I embarked on a PhD, followed by more than 10 years of research covering emotional intelligence, links between mental health and nutrition, health benefits of the Mediterranean diet, and how parents shape children’s diets.
During my research career I won a Fresh Science People’s Choice Award in 2005, an Australian Research Council Fellowship from 2007-10, a South Australian (SA) Science Excellence Award in 2011, an SA Health Award in 2013 and a six-week fellowship with Spain’s University of Navarra in 2016.
In 2017 I completed an intensive Science in the Media program through the Australian National University. Narrative Science Writing Courses with Johns Hopkins, completed in May 2019, included Techniques of Science-Medical Writing, Science-Medical Writing Workshop, The Literature of Science, Science Narratives Workshop and Science Profiles Workshop – Writing about People – all with Grade A.
Since then I’ve written about topics as diverse as sharks and spidering, bush food and edible weeds, seed rescue and Tahitian bonefish, doxiepoos and horses, robots, loneliness, earth ships and goldfish on wheels, and am generally interested in all things related to us fascinating and complex human beings and the wondrous planet we are blessed to inhabit.
I provide quick turnarounds on embargoed stories and love to dive deeper in longer form features. Please send writing requests to natalie.parletta@gmail.com.
