Date: Thursday, April 10th
Time: 12:10 – 1:30 PM
Location: 411 Fayerweather Hall

Historical writing for general audiences comes in a variety of forms and subgenres. In this talk, commercial nonfiction author and historian of science Dr. Surekha Davies will discuss the research, writing, and business of creative and narrative nonfiction history books. Topics will include: how a trade-list book differs from an academic book; getting an agent; getting a book deal; researching the market; devising a saleable topic; and making a living.

Dr. Surekha Davies is a British author, speaker, and historian, with a BA and an M.Phil. in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D. from the University of London. She is the author of Humans: A Monstrous History (University of California Press, 2025). Her first book, Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human: New Worlds, Maps and Monsters (Cambridge University Press, 2016), won the Morris D. Forkosch Prize for the best first book in intellectual history from the Journal of the History of Ideas and the Roland H. Bainton Prize in History and Theology. Her writing has been supported by such institutions as the American Historical Association, the Library of Congress, the American Philosophical Society, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the John Carter Brown Library. She has written about biology, anthropology, and monsters in the Times Literary Supplement, Nature, Science, and Aeon.