United Kingdom
I write and teach writing.
A journalist for over 25 years, I've published stories on health, medicine and tech in WHO Bulletin and The Lancet to the Guardian, Health Policy Watch, SciDev.net, BMJ, BBC News and Nature. I'm interested in global health, from affordable insulin, oxygen and the opioid crisis, to fake news on vaccines and mental health in the COVID-19 era.
I'm also a novelist. My first novel, Bad Material, was a finalist in the Mslexia Novel Competition 2021, judged by Hilary Mantel, Marianne Tatepo and Jo Unwin. I also won a place on the Hachette Grow Your Story 2022 for my novel Mengo Baby. I have been highly commended for two novels in the BPA First Novel Award 2020 and Peggy Chapman First Novel Award -Bridport Prize 2020.
I am currently completing a PhD in creative writing after earning a distinction for my MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London. My creative non-fiction has been featured on the fantastic Story radio podcast.
You can reach me at tatumnanderson at gmail.com. I am represented by Catherine Cho, @Catkcho of Paper Literary.
Below is a very small selection of my work.
After the record-breaking pace of vaccine development, vaccine roll-outs are getting off to a frustratingly slow start. Tatum Anderson reports. Covid-19 vaccines save lives. Kampmann B, Jack SM. Kampmann B, et al. BMJ. 2021 Apr 9;373:n886. doi: 10.1136/bmj.n886. BMJ. 2021. PMID: 33836992 No abstract available.
Binish Desai knows a thing or two about recycling. "Growing up in Valsad (Gujarat, India) I was surrounded by paper mills," he says. "As a by-product of their manufacturing processes, they generated millions of tonnes of this unpleasant grey sludge that was just dumped into landfills."
Q: How did your feminist world view develop? A: I was born and raised in Kampala, Uganda. My dad was a high-ranking, authoritarian police officer but very progressive, very accepting of us, his four daughters. My mum was more traditional.
The psychological repercussions of COVID-19 have engendered multiple ad hoc initiatives and raised awareness of the need for investment in mental health services. Tatum Anderson reports.
The COVID 19 pandemic is exposing an important weakness in health systems: medical oxygen production and delivery. Tatum Anderson reports.
When Rebecca Molubah (not her real name) entered the busy government hospital in Gbarnga, Liberia, to give birth to her second child, she was anxious about her prospects. Having been through the experience eight years earlier, the 32-year-old knew what it was like to give birth without any sort of pain relief.
Tatum Anderson is a journalist and writer from London and The Invisibles tells of her time as an inpatient at St Thomas's Hospital.
Tanusree Chaudhuri, 38, was pregnant with her first child when her supervisor told her she would have to give up her dreams. She was doing a doctorate in computational biology and aspired to improve people's health. "He told me 'you are married now, why do you need a PhD?
Tatum Anderson Highly Commended for Bad Material