Fellows

Erica Westly

2017

Freelance Writer and Author,  Reuters

The history of swimming instruction and drowning prevention  Judge

Erica Westly is a freelance journalist based in Tucson, Arizona. She has written for Popular Science, Slate.com, Smithsonian.com and The New York Times, among other publications. Her most recent project is a book about women’s softball entitled “Fastpitch: The Untold History of Softball and the Women Who Made the Game,” published in 2016. In addition to sports history, she has a longstanding interest in public health issues such as infectious diseases and accidental deaths due to injury. Westly is a past recipient of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution science journalism fellowship. She holds master’s degrees in neuroscience and journalism from Case Western Reserve University and New York University, respectively.