Scientist, academic publisher release romantic thriller set in world of biomedical science

"LabLit.com provides a fly-on-the-wall view into the hidden world of scientists," Dr. Rohn says, "and promotes the use of more science and scientists in fiction, which is a subversive way to overcome negative stereotypes about the profession. There's a lot of science fiction out there," she adds, "but I couldn't find more than a hundred general fiction novels ever written that feature realistic scientists as central characters plying their trade—which is ludicrous if you think of how central science is to our lives." She coined "lab lit" for this small but growing genre, a term now in widespread use.

In addition to fiction, LabLit.com publishes essays, humor, poetry, interviews, reviews, and artwork, with contributors from a diverse cross section of literature, science, and the arts. It also has lively forums where people can exchange ideas about science and writing. The site has heavy traffic from readers around the world and has been featured in publications such as Science, Nature, and the Guardian. Even the National Book Award–winning novelist Richard Powers is a fan, calling LabLit "a wonderful venture, and a topic of the most resonant importance."

In 2007, Dr. Rohn returned to full-time research science at UCL but has maintained her engagement in "lab lit." Several mainstream publications now run frequent features on this theme. Dr. Rohn is the chair of a well-attended book club at The Royal Institution in London, blogs regularly at Mind The Gap on the Nature Network, and has appeared on TV, radio, podcasts, live panels, documentaries, and in print as a science/literature/art/culture pundit.

Experimental Heart is Dr. Rohn's first novel. In 2007 it was shortlisted for the Dundee International Book Prize, the world's largest literary competition for unpublished novels. Shortly beforehand, Dr. Rohn had been contacted by Dr. John Inglis, Executive Director and Publisher of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press in New York, who shared her concern about science's public image. "I live and work among scientists at Cold Spring Harbor," he says. "To succeed here, people need imagination and drive. They're passionate and diverse, with complex lives and characters." The popular notion that scientists are remote and cold-blooded, he says, isn't just wrong, it's risky, because mischaracterizing them makes it easy to dismiss what they say about things that are vital to our future.