Janice P. Nimura

Janice P. Nimura received a Public Scholar Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities in support of her work on The Doctors Blackwell, a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in biography. Her previous book, Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey from East to West and Back, was a New York Times Notable book in 2015. She is a fellow of the Society of American Historians and was recently a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Wesleyan University's Bailey College of the Environment.

Nimura is currently researching a new project on Rachel Carson and some of the 19th-century women who preceded her as close observers of and generators of wonder in the natural world. Though best known for the environmental manifesto Silent Spring, Carson did not set out to be an activist--she was first famous for a trio of bestselling books about the sea. Her ability to merge science and poetic prose makes her part of a lineage of women who looked closely at nature and taught a wide audience how to feel a sense of awe and responsibility.