Tish Davidson

Growing up in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, I wanted to be a polar bear. That didn’t work out, which is probably a good thing given the rapidly disappearing polar ice. Instead, I became a biologist. But after earning a bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary and a master’s degree from Dartmouth College, I discovered I was all thumbs in the lab. Laboratory research was definitely not in my future.

In my first “real” job, I discovered that a lot of people don’t like to write, but I’ve always loved putting ideas on paper. Every job I’ve ever had became a writing job. When I worked as the quality control director at a vegetable cannery, I wrote everything from reports for the Food and Drug Administration to responses to customer complaints. When I worked as a teacher at a training school for nannies, who wrote the school newsletter? You guessed it. Then I was asked to write a newspaper column about games and another one about parenting. Finally, I just gave up and became a full-time writer. Over the past thirty years, I have written everything from restaurant reviews to true-life stories to mysteries to textbooks.

To date, I have written 19 traditionally published books. All the adult books have been published by either Bloomsbury or Bloomsbury Academic. The most recent, a second edition of The Vaccine Debate explains the science behind vaccines and examines the controversial ideas and values of those who support and those who oppose vaccination. Many of my books such as Hormones: Your Questions Answered and What You need to Know About Diabetes have given me the opportunity to share my fascination with human biology in non-technical language that high school students and adult can understand. I have also delved into history with From War Room to Living Room: Everyday Innovations from the Military and Medical Firsts: Innovations and Milestones That Changed the World. Medical Firsts has also been translated into Turkish and ta Chinese publisher has acquired the translation rights for the upcoming Encyclopedia of Cognitive Biases. Most of these books are available in both hardback and paperback editions.

About half my books are nonfiction books for young people. My best-selling children’s book is Facing Competition: Can You Play by the Rules and Stay in the Game (Scholastic). The book I most enjoyed researching was African American Scientists and Inventors (Mason Crest). Once a child told me that she “thought you had to be dead to be an author.” I suspect some children think the same thing about inventors, so I interviewed and wrote about some living scientists and inventors.. A second favorite book in terms of interesting research was Global Trade in the Ancient World (Mason Crest). I now know where all the “stan” countries are —Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan—because ancient trade routes ran through these countries.

I’ve also written many encyclopedia articles and had a newspaper column that at its height ran in 23 papers. In my non-writing time, I volunteer with Fremont Area Writers, a group for accomplished and aspiring writers of all genres, cook, garden, and, of course, read. I have been to all 50 US states and visited quite a few foreign countries. My favorite country visited so far is Australia, and someday I hope to spend an extended period there.