United Kingdom
I write for a living.
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 write about 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 a fiction writer. 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.
After finishing an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London I began a PhD in creative writing at Birkbeck. I'm three years in.
You can reach me at tatumnanderson at gmail.com. I am represented by Catherine Cho, @Catkcho of Paper Literary.
Below is a small selection of my work.
MODERN, Western medicine tends to pooh-pooh its herbal cousin. It is true that synthetic pharmaceuticals are purer, more reliable and often more effective than herbs. But many of them have herbal origins, and the sight of pharmacists botanising (collecting herbs from the countryside for sale as medicine) was common in Europe within living memory.
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.
Highly Commended for the Peggy Chapman First Novel Award: Tatum Anderson Mengo Baby
The COVID 19 pandemic is exposing an important weakness in health systems: medical oxygen production and delivery. Tatum Anderson reports.
Tatum Anderson Highly Commended for Bad Material
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.