Winifred Gallagher investigates why our lives are the way they are from different perspectives, including history, behavioral science, religion, and the environment. She first took to journalism as a teenaged reporter on a rural daily newspaper, then studied art and architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, before returning to print at Discover, Time Inc’s science magazine. Her stories have appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, The Smithsonian and many other publications and been featured on NPR and PBS programs. Her ten books include Attention and the Focused Life, a New York Times best-seller, and Just the Way You Are, first published as I.D.: How Heredity and Experience Make You Who You Are, a New York Times Notable Book.
After years of living half-time in rural Wyoming and New York City, she now resides in New York’s Hudson Valley.