Roxanne Khamsi is an author, speaker and contributing writer for The Atlantic. Her first book, Beyond Inheritance (Riverhead Books, 2026), reveals how we mutate genetically every day of our lives and how the DNA changes that accumulate within us can profoundly affect our health. She has reported extensively on the intersection of genetics and medicine for more than two decades. Her writing has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Economist, Popular Science, The Atlantic, Scientific American, Slate, Nature, New York magazine, WIRED magazine and National Geographic. Roxanne’s March 2020 article, They Say Coronavirus Isn’t Airborne—but It’s Definitely Borne By Air, was the first major news piece to argue that the pandemic coronavirus could transmit readily through air, and was included in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2021 anthology. She has appeared on television programs such as CBS News and has guest-hosted the national radio shows On The Media and Science Friday. 

Roxanne served as Chief News Editor at Nature Medicine, one of the most widely-read research journals in the world, for more than a decade. Prior to that, she worked as a reporter for the popular UK-based magazine New Scientist covering biomedical research. In addition to her work as a writer and editor, she has taught at Stony Brook University in Long Island, New York, through the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science, and at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. She also served on the Editorial Advisory Board of TEDMED. Roxanne earned her degree in biology from Dartmouth College, with a concentration in genetics. She lives in Montreal.