Mary Ellen Hannibal
Board Member
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Mary Ellen Hannibal is an author and avid citizen scientist from the Bay Area. Her work focuses on natural history and the important connections between people, species, and ecosystems. Her most recent book, Citizen Scientist: Searching for Heroes and Hope in an Age of Extinction, was named one of the best titles of 2016 by the San Francisco Chronicle and received a Nautilus Book Award. Reporting deeply, Hannibal digs into the origins of today’s tech-savvy citizen science movement – tracing it back through centuries of amateur observations by writers and naturalists. Prompted by her novelist father’s sudden death, she connects the activity of bearing witness to nature today with a broad inquiry into time, place, and purpose. Hannibal’s previous books include The Spine of the Continent, about which Publisher’s Weekly said, “This is what science writing should be: fascinating and true.”
The recipient of multiple awards and fellowships, her work has appeared in The New York Times, Esquire, Nautilus, Bay Nature, and many other publications. For many years, Hannibal edited and wrote the cover story for The Leaflet, the publication of the San Francisco Botanical Garden Society.
