About

Hello! I'm Danna Staaf; learn about my name here. Below is my author bio, which introduces me in the third person, and below that are some comics, which introduce me in goofy pictures.

Danna Staaf is a science communicator and marine biologist who earned a PhD from Stanford University with her studies of baby squid. Her writing has appeared in Nautilus, Atlas Obscura, and Science, and she is the author of Monarchs of the Sea: The Extraordinary 500-Million-Year History of Cephalopods (named one of Science Friday's best science books of the year), The Lady and the Octopus: How Jeanne Villepreux-Power Invented Aquariums and Revolutionized Marine Biology (a best book of the year of the School Library Journal and the Children's Book Committee), and Nursery Earth: The Wondrous Lives of Baby Animals and the Extraordinary Ways They Shape Our World (hailed as "a gobsmacking delight!"). Her newest book is The Lives of Octopuses and their Relatives: A Natural History of Cephalopods. Staaf lives in San Jose, California, with her husband, children, cat, and innumerable plush octopuses.

 


As I'm reading on a beanbag chair, a child joins and asks me to read to him. I read an excerpt of An Immense World about parasitic flies, and he is nonplussed. I realize I've become Calvin's Dad.


The comic begins with a conversation in media res. My husband says "Maggots are yummy" which I promise to remember, and he asks me not to take it out of context. I reply, "I'm a journalist, that's what I do." (Disclaimer: This is not, in fact, good journalism.)