Elizabeth Svoboda makes a living convincing editors to let her write about stuff she thinks is cool or thought-provoking—think sales rep for ideas. The subjects she’s covered, limited only by her editors’ skepticism, include dinosaur track-based detective work, the connection between waterslides and chaos theory, and creationist biology classes in Galapagos schools. She grew up in the suburbs of Western New York and lives in San Jose, CA with her husband, Eric, a software engineer at Nvidia.

Elizabeth likes: hot tubs, seltzer with copious amounts of lemon, beedogs, bad ’90s pop, The Simpsons, the movie UHF with Al Yankovic, historical fiction, In-n-Out Burger, ground pepper, Annie Dillard, the dog Asta in The Thin Man, ideas that move from brain to page with little lost in translation.

Elizabeth dislikes: cold showers, coffee with copious amounts of Splenda, fruitflies, bad ’70s interior decorating, Family Guy, the movie XXX with Vin Diesel, science fiction, open-and-shut propositions, shaken pepper, Annie Lennox, the dog Beethoven in Beethoven, internal-monologue ideas that refuse to appear on the computer screen.

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