Nigel Hey

Much of my career has been associated with science writing, the rest with other enterprises that we tend to lump together as various parts of “the media.” The media, then, are the subject of a fair amount of commentary in my latest book, Wonderment. Because it is a life story, it also includes some quite different subject material – living twin lives as an Englishman and an American; being always enticed by adventure and travel; cultivating a spiritual and philosophical life; bringing up a family; friendships with Native American people; and living since infancy with chronic asthma. There’s more about the book in my websites, http://www.nigelhey.com and http://www.troubador.co.uk/book_info.....

When people ask me why I decided to be a journalist, or a writer, I reply simply that it is because I am curious, and being more specific would tie me down to a relatively narrow field. Writing, and the observation and research that supports it, satisfies my curiosity while never failing to fill me with even more wonder. The book explains how this happens to me, and suggests that many people hold back their own gifts for wonderment, missing out on some of the most precious gifts of life. As Albert Einstein said, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.”

I earned my first check as a writer at the age of 11, when a short story was accepted by the BBC for the Children’s Hour. I then moved with my parents from England to the United States and while in high school worked an old-fashioned “printer’s devil” and contributed part-time for other local newspapers. After getting a bachelor’s degree in mass communications I wrote for UPI in the States, then for newspapers in Bermuda and England, and finally launched my science writing career at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Here my job was to find nationally interesting articles in the wide variety of research being done by a lab of 10,000 employees, write them up, and spread the word. I've been consulting and writing books independently since 2001.

I am a native of Morecambe, Lancashire, England, and received my bachelor’s degree from the University of Utah. When I was about eight years old my mother announced that I would be a writer, and I have never strayed, nor wanted to stray, from that path. It’s too much fun. I live three months of the year in London and most of the rest in New Mexico. My next book will be a travel memoir set in New Mexico and Arizona.

I began working part-time for U.S. newspapers in my teens. I worked briefly for UPI after gaining a degree in mass communications, worked for two years at the daily Bermuda Mid-Ocean News, where I designed and edited a weekly magazine supplement, and subsequently joined Sandia National Laboratories. I was a Sandia senior administrator (internal consultant) at the time I left to start a consultancy in October 2001.

At other times I served as managing editor of the weekly Albuquerque News and editorial director of the London-based publications arm of IMS International (now Dun & Bradstreet’s IMS Health).