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Authors
Chris Higgins is the author of The Blogger Abides, and has written for This American Life, The Atlantic, Breakfast on Mars, and The Magazine. You can follow him at chrishiggins.com.
Miss Cellania has written for mental_floss since 2007. She is also the managing editor at Neatorama and keeps a small humor blog called Miss Cellania. In her spare time, she is raising a frightening number of children in a small Kentucky town.
Stacy Conradt is a staff writer who's been contributing to mental_floss since 2008. As an avid board game lover, she is especially fond of her work on Split Decision and Mixed Nuts. In her spare time (ha) she likes to run badly and visit roadside attractions that make most people cringe. She never met an Abe Lincoln tribute she didn't love. If you have one to suggest, let her know at twitter.com/stacy_writes.
Colin Patrick is an author and a comedian. In addition to mental_floss, he's written for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Splitsider, McSweeney's, and Cracked.
Erik Sass is the author of The Mental Floss History of the United States and co-author with Steve Wiegand of The Mental Floss History of the World, both of which you should go buy right now. When he’s not writing about historical curiosities for mental_floss, he covers online and traditional media for MediaPost. His interests include water gardens, games of strategy, geography, and cats.
Linguist, author of In the Land of Invented Languages, living in Chicago, doing her part to fight off the cot-caught merger and keep "gym shoes" alive.
A native of fabulous Rochester, NY, Mark loves freelance writing, community theater, & anything dinosaur-related. He’s also obsessed with Denver Broncos football.
Sean Hutchinson lives in the wilds of Brooklyn, NY. He’s got a couple of them fancy schmancy academic degrees in English literature, is a big World War II buff, counts Carl Sagan and Harry Nilsson among his personal heroes, and he’s also a huge movie fan. When he's not coming up with strange and interesting things to write about on Mental Floss, he's writing movie reviews and news at CriterionCast.
Eleanor Herman is the New York Times bestselling author of Sex with Kings, Sex with the Queen, and several other works of popular history. She has hosted Lost Worlds for the History Channel and The Madness of Henry VIII for the National Geographic Channel and has filmed two seasons of America: Fact vs. Fiction for the American Heroes Channel. Herman, who happily dresses in Renaissance gowns, lives with her husband, their black lab, and her four very dignified cats in McLean, Virginia.
Angela Tung is a writer in San Francisco. Her work has appeared in The Bellingham Review, CNN Living, Dark Sky Magazine, The Frisky, Matador Life, The Nervous Breakdown, The New York Press, Carve Magazine, and elsewhere. She also blogs about words and language for Wordnik.
Rudie Obias lives in Brooklyn, New York. He's a freelance writer interested in cinema, pop culture, science fiction, and web culture. His work can be found at ShockYa.com, MoviePilot.com, UPROXX, io9, ScreenRant.com, Giantfreakinrobot.com, and, of course, Mental Floss. He is also a Co-Working Evangelist for Bat Haus Co-Working in Brooklyn.
Jake Rossen is a writer, editor, and curator of fine comic strip art. (Except Garfield.) His byline can be found within the pages of The New York Times, ESPN.com, Wired.com and a slew of health and fitness-related publications.
Nick Greene is Editor-at-Large for MentalFloss.com. He has written about trying to ride the entire New York Subway system in one day, surviving the apocalypse without a spare set of contact lenses, and whether or not Elvis was actually any good at karate. Originally from Chicago, he currently lives in Oakland, California.
Clair is a freelance writer and bartender-at-large in Birmingham, Ala. When she's not writing, Clair is usually nerding out on trashy science-fiction or researching cocktail history. Her other writing and rambling is usually posted on Twitter @see_clair_write and at clairmclafferty.com.
Kate Horowitz is a science writer for mental_floss. She writes about pretty much everything, but especially likes to bring readers' attention to squishy, underrated organisms; chronic illness and disability; science art; bodily functions; animal cognition; parasites; and the Moon. She lives in Washington, D.C., where she takes lots of walks and ogles other people's dogs.
Rebecca Onion is a writer and academic living in Philadelphia. She runs Slate's history blog, The Vault.
Rebecca O'Connell is an assistant editor for mentalfloss.com. She spends her free time prowling flea markets, making increasingly elaborate grilled cheeses, and watching 90s cult television. She lives in Brooklyn with two roommates and a dog with more sass than fur.
Paul Anthony Jones is a writer and musician from Newcastle upon Tyne. He is the author of word origins guide Haggard Hawks and Paltry Poltroons, and he runs @HaggardHawks.
Mark Peters writes about euphemisms for Visual Thesaurus, comedy for McSweeney's, and comic books for Bark. He is the author of the forthcoming book Bullshit: A Lexicon from Three Rivers Press.
Beth Anne Macaluso is an editor for MentalFloss.com. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, running, and figuring out which wines pair best with her favorite cereals. She lives in Hoboken with her dog Ruthie, who is named after Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Shaunacy Ferro is a senior staff writer for MentalFloss.com. Her work has previously appeared in Fast Company, Popular Science, and Architect magazine, among others. She lives in Brooklyn and spends most of her free time taking photos of her cat.
Bess Lovejoy is a staff editor at Mental Floss, a former editor at Smithsonian.com and Schott's Almanac, and the author of Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses.
Erika Berlin is an editor at MentalFloss.com. She's a disco ball enthusiast, a pop culture addict, and a fan of pretending low-brow TV shows are educational. She is a Midwestern New Yorker who has a miniature schnauzer named Amadeus (after her favorite movie/composer). Erika was previously an editor at Rolling Stone, Cosmopolitan, and Refinery 29, among others.
Suzanne Raga loves writing about everything from history, business, music, and literature to personal finance, life hacks, food trends, and health. A graduate of Princeton University, she is the author of You Rock! How To Be A Star Student & Still Have Fun, curator of the indie music blog After The Show, and a whiz at Latin Scrabble.
Jeff Wells is a freelance writer and English teacher living in New York City. He’s a warrior of the casual sports league circuit, with titles in soccer and volleyball and a host of nagging injuries to boot. He also has a softer side that includes writing poetry and walking his French bulldog, Ruby. His current fascinations include the Civil War, German beer, and making the perfect omelet.
Nick Keppler is a Pittsburgh-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in The Village Voice, Nerve, Vice, and Slate. When he’s not on his laptop, he’s probably kayaking on one of the city’s rivers with a Led Zeppelin track blaring through his earbuds.
Michele Debczak is a staff writer for mentalfloss.com. In the past she’s written about cheese and movies, two of her favorite things in life. In her free time she enjoys dogspotting, eating breakfast foods, and reading about alien conspiracy theories on Wikipedia.
Andrew is a staff writer for mentalfloss.com. His name can also be found on sites like Complex.com and Thrillist, while the rest of him can be found wherever there are sneakers, movies, and picture books.
Valerie DeBenedette is a freelance writer who lives in New York State with a small tan dog and a big red cat. She most often writes about health and medicine and knits quite frequently.
Bryan Reesman loves music, movies, theater, comic books, books ... he can never keep up with everything, but he has fun trying.
Susan Welsh is a freelance writer and pastry afficionado. She lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania where she is inspired by the historical villages and pristine countryside along the Delaware River.
Kristin Hunt is a writer and professional movie geek. She's previously worked on the digital teams at Thrillist and Maxim, but you can also find her byline on GQ, Nerve, and Paste.
Stephanie Vermillion is a travel and lifestyle journalist and filmmaker, and the founder of Stephanie Vermillion Studio. Her work has been published in outlets like Mental Floss, Elite Daily, and UNILAD. She's a member of the Society of American Travel Writers, and author of the road trip travel blog, The Wanderlost Way.
Karen Gardiner is a travel and culture writer from Scotland, currently based in New York City. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, BBC, Condé Nast Traveler, and more. Find more at her website.
Nicola Prentis has taught English all over the world and now writes materials for English Language Teaching, including award winning fiction for learners. She writes about English and the industry at www.simpleenglishuk.wordpress.com.
Nina Pearlman is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, cooking, and chasing her 1-year-old son around the apartment.
Eeva Moore is a writer and politico living in Berlin. She has extreme geographic commitment issues, and so has never lived anywhere for longer than six years and is eyeing her next move. She speaks in Buffy references and will talk your ear off about gerrymandering and judicial elections. And if you’re an American abroad, she can totally help you register to vote.
A graduate of Williams College, Christine has written for The Huffington Post, Inverse, Salon, Bustle, PopSci, VICE, Elle, Dazed & Confused, i-D, and Harper's Bazaar. She has also worked for The Stockholm Film Festival and appeared as a guest speaker on Monocle's live podcast.
Chuck Tryon’s day job is working as an English professor at Fayetteville State University, but he has also written for Alternet, Filmmaker Magazine, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. He is also the author of three books, including his most recent book, Political TV.
Rebekah Shoemake is a summer intern for MentalFloss.com. She enjoys reading, listening to podcasts, re-watching Bob’s Burgers on Netflix, and looking at dogs on Petfinder. She splits her time between Boone, NC, where she is a big sister and free babysitter, and Princeton, NJ, where she’s a rising senior in the English department at Princeton and a theater nerd.
Corinne Cummings is a writer and editor who believes you can drink iced coffee and rosé all year round.
Garrett Williams is a musician, writer, and lawn-game enthusiast. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and their volatile cat/corgi duo. When not picnicking in Prospect Park or cheering on his beloved Pittsburgh Pirates, he can be found kicking out the jams with his soul band, The Irresponsibles.
Kenneth Partridge is a music and pop-culture writer based in Brooklyn. He's written for such publications as Billboard, The AV Club, Pitchfork, and Refinery29. His hobbies include reading, running, shopping for records, and attempting to justify his love of ska.
Allison C. Meier is a writer and editor focused on visual culture and overlooked history. She is the former senior editor at Atlas Obscura, and more recently a staff writer at Hyperallergic. She has contributed to the New York Times, Public Domain Review, Wellcome Collection, JSTOR Daily, CityLab, Narratively, and other illustrious publications. She moonlights as a cemetery tour guide in New York City.
Jeff Merron is a journalist who writes about pop culture, history, sports, and technology.
Chris Chafin writes about design, technology, the media, and other assorted strange groupings of people. He would be very flattered if you would follow him on Twitter.
Stephanie Faris is a professional freelance writer and novelist. Her work has appeared on NYPost.com, The Week, Cosmopolitan.com, SheKnows, and Ecommerce Insiders, among many others. She is the Simon & Schuster author of 30 Days of No Gossip, 25 Roses, and the Piper Morgan series.
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