Jo Marchant is an award-winning science journalist and author of several books including the New York Times bestseller Cure: A journey into the science of mind over body (2016), in which she combined a first-person narrative with conventional reporting to explore how emotions, expectations and beliefs influence physical health. She has worked as a senior editor at New Scientist and at Nature, and her articles on topics from cave paintings to synthetic biology have appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Guardian and Smithsonian magazine. She has a PhD in genetics.