NCSWA sponsors quarterly dinner meetings and a number of special events, including Zoom talks, happy hours, workshops and field trips. The dinner meetings, preceded by a cocktail hour, are the mainstay of NCSWA and provide a regular venue for the region's science writers to meet and compare notes with their colleagues. The food samples a range of cuisine from Afghani to Indian, from Chinese dim sum to rubber chicken. After dinner, a scientist discusses current research. Speakers have included astrophysicist George Smoot, climatologist Stephen Schneider, anthropologist Katherine Milton, chemist Richard Zare, and archaeologist Margaret Conkey. Venues for these dinner meetings rotate, generally between San Francisco and the East Bay.

We also schedule several special events each year. These have included guided explorations of the Hayward Fault, the Sutter Buttes, and Jasper Ridge Reserve, behind-the-scenes tours of the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, a Napa Valley tour on the science of winemaking, campouts at UC Natural Reserves, and workshops on the business of freelancing and computer-assisted reporting.

We are a diverse group that includes newspaper science reporters, popular and trade magazine writers and editors, radio and television broadcasters, public information officers, marketing copywriters, and technical writers. Our members cover such topics as agriculture, anthropology, astronomy, behavior, biology, chemistry, computers, earth sciences, environmental issues, medicine, and physics. 

Please join us! NCSWA membership is open to all science writers and communicators, no matter where you live in the greater Bay Area! Members receive our quarterly email newsletter and email notice of NCSWA events, and can subscribe to our jobline, which provides notices of job openings.