Amanda R. Martinez is a science journalist and playwright living in New York City and Silicon Valley. Her reporting has been published by The New Yorker.com, The Atlantic, and Scientific American, among others. Her dramatic work has been produced or developed by Yale University, The Samuel French Short Play Festival, The Goodman Theatre, The Chicago Dramatists, The Skeleton Rep, and Primary Stages Einhorn School of Performing Arts. She's currently writing a nonfiction book, under contract with St. Martin's Press and Simon & Schuster UK, on the science and psychology of nostalgia that explores what the emotion is, why we feel it, and how it shapes who we are.

In her quest for stories, Amanda has reported on four continents and Oceania. She's stalked marine iguanas in the Galápagos, hunted the aurora borealis, witnessed her brain "on nostalgia" triggered by music, and talked with people in over 40 cities about the extraordinary memories that inform their identity. Amanda holds a master's in science writing from MIT and a bachelor's in playwriting from Yale.