Wired’s McKenna wins Cohn Prize

Maryn McKenna, senior writer at Wired and a widely published journalist and author specializing in public health, global health, and food policy, has been selected to receive the 2023 Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting.

In selecting McKenna from an extraordinarily competitive field of nominees, the judges hailed her reporting and writing on infectious disease and global health as authoritative, deeply sourced, and beautifully written.

“Stories about these complex topics could easily sound like term papers,” wrote one judge, “but hers don’t. They center compelling characters—scientists, doctors, patients—in vividly rendered settings, and the writing is clear and definitive. In short, these stories felt like they were breaking new ground, written by a seasoned journalist who is ahead of the curve.”

McKenna, who is a senior fellow of the Center for the Study of Human Health at Emory University, was honored for work published in The Atlantic, Scientific American, Smithsonian, and The New Republic, as well as Wired.

The Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting is awarded annually by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing for a body of work published or broadcast within the last five years.

McKenna will receive a $5,000 cash award and be recognized during an Oct. 7 awards ceremony at ScienceWriters2023, a joint meeting of CASW and the National Association of Science Writers to be held in Colorado this fall. She will discuss one of her prizewinning stories during a “story behind the story” session Oct. 8.

Read more here.