Jennie Dusheck:
Although reluctant at first, she couldn't resist after seeing her co-author's sample chapter

At the time, Dusheck admits, she had doubts whether she wanted to become a co-author. She enjoyed editing and, in fact, told Tobin's editor that she would be moe interested in editing the book. Then she got into Tobin's manuscript and was hooked: "I liked the way Tobin had included historical vignettes about individual biologists and I liked his emphasis on experiment, but most of all I loved that he never talked down to his readers. Tobin's tone was consistently friendly, unstilted, and conversational -- never patronizing."

The first edition of Tobin and Dusheck's Asking About Life was published in 1998. In 1999 it won a Texty Award for Excellence in Life Sciences from the Text and Academic Authors Association. "I loved winning the Texty," said Dusheck. "I was delighted we got it. It has been a wonderful thing for me, and it definitely helped the book." The book's publisher also reacted positively to the award, placing a banner announcing the Texty on the fourth printing of the first edition. The book's editor made reference to the award in promotional materials, including the book's web site, for the second edition, which came out in 2000.

Asking About Life is different from other books in the field, said Dusheck. It gives students enough information for them to draw their own conclusions about some of the big controversies and personality conflicts in biology. Each chapter begins with a story, she said, chosen to relate to some important idea in the field. For example, a chapter on deuterostome animals begins with a story about a wild and controversial idea first introduced in the 19th century -- the idea that there is a connection between the body plans of arthropods and vertebrates -- an idea recently confirmed by molecular genetics. The book is more sophisticated scientifically than the average nonmajors' books, she said, while sticking to the main points and avoiding too much detail.

Dusheck said she always saw a career in writing as a possibility. Her father was a newspaper science writer and her mother was a medical writer. "I liked science, but I didn't want to work in academia," she said. "I wanted to do something in the outside world. I liked writing and was always good at it." After earning a bachelor's in zoology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1978, and a master's in zoology from the University of California, Davis, in 1983, she earned a certificate in science writing from the University of Santa Cruz in 1985.

From 1983 to 1985 Dusheck worked as a staff research associate in the Department of Molecular Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. There, she helped determine the best protocol for preserving and examining Xenopus laevis embryos for a 1992 NASA space shuttle experiment on axis determination at Og.

From 1985 to 1990, she worked as a freelance writer, publishing several articles in Science, Science News, Pacific Discovery and the San Francisco Chronicle. She also wrote or rewrote six chapters on genetics and plant physiology for the first edition of Postlethwait and Hopson's The Nature of Life, which became a best-selling introductory college biology text. From 1985 to 1987, she edited the University of California, Santa Cruz' Institute of Marine Sciences News, and from 1986 to 1993, the Science Communication Program's Science Notes, each year guiding 10 to 20 novice writers and illustrators through the process of writing and illustrating for publication. For her work as principal editor and art director, she received five awards from the National Council for the Advancement and Support of Education.

During that time Dusheck learned a lot about working with illustrations. She used what she learned to help develop the illustrations in Asking About Life, finding illustrators open to working with her. "Developing the art was one of my favorite parts of doing the book," she said.

In addition to co-authoring the first and second editions of Asking About Life, Dusheck contributed five chapters to Holt, Rinehart and Winston's 22-chapter middle school biology text, Life Science, part of the Holt Science & Technology Series published in 2001. She gives occasional lectures in science writing and illustration at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In the summer of 2001 she worked with two software developers to complete a module for an online course in Advance Placement Environmental Science with support from a grant from the University of California College Prep Initiative.

Dusheck doesn't have a set schedule for writing. She writes whenever she has free time, or when her children, Danny and Charlie, aren't around. "I usually write in the morning," she said. "I drink my coffee, check my e-mail, and then go directly to writing." She takes notes longhand, including her take on them and where they could go, and then uses them to organize a piece she's writing. "When I write I like to have a clear outline in my head of what I want to say," said Dusheck. "I can't write the rest of the piece until I write the lead. I may reorganize it later, but I can't get started unless I have a general idea of where I want to go."

When writing the second edition of Asking About Life, Dusheck said she had a lot less time to develop ideas of her own. Because of that, she preferred the experience of writing the first edition. Her editors and the marketing department ignored her for long periods of time, leaving her to her own devices, she said: "I liked that. Alan Tobin and I also had the time to hash out lots of philosophical and scientific issues by phone and email." The schedule for the second edition forced a change. So much time went into to responding to reviewer comments that Dusheck and Tobin couldn't work on new ideas as much as the wanted. "With the first edition I was more proactive, while with the second edition, I was more reactive," she said.

— reported by Kim Pawlak, 2001