Rachel Nuwer is an award-winning freelance journalist who reports about science, travel, food and adventure for the New York Times, National Geographic, Scientific American and more. Her multi-award winning first book, Poached: Inside the Dark World of Wildlife Trafficking, was published in 2018 with Da Capo Press. Her second book, I Feel Love: MDMA and the Quest for Connection in a Fractured World, was published in June 2023 with Bloomsbury.
Rachel's love for nature and science was kicked off by a childhood exploring the bayous and beaches of southern Mississippi. As a biology student at Loyola University New Orleans, she spent time in Laos researching Mekong River fishes, sparking a passion for travel and conservation. This wanderlust has taken her to 78 countries – six of which she has lived in.
In 2010, Rachel investigated illegal wildlife trade and natural resource use in Vietnam for her ecology master’s thesis at the University of East Anglia. She published her research in the scientific journal Oryx. In 2011, she earned a second master’s degree at New York University’s Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP).
She lives in Brooklyn with a computer programmer, a bonded pair of buns and a rotating roster of foster cats. Reach her at rachelnuwer at gmail.