Last week, I had the privilege of interviewing Professor Alex Bezzerides, the author of “Evolution Gone Wrong” that was on The {C}BC Nonfiction list.
Bezzerides currently works at Lewis-Clark State College in northern Idaho as a biology professor. For school, Professor Bezzerides first got his undergrad in biology with a minor in music from Colorado State University. For graduate school, Bezzerides went to Cornell University, where he earned his Ph.D.in neurobiology and behavior.
He worked a few odd jobs, as did his girlfriend (now wife), Julie Bezzerides, until he started working at a college in Wisconsin as a biology professor. He and his wife then moved to Lewiston, Idaho to start working at Lewis-Clark State College in 2009. His wife became a Spanish Professor and was the Humanities Division Chair at LC as well.
“Evolution Gone Wrong” is not the only thing Bezzerides authored. He has written many scientific articles. That said, he did not intend to write a book at first. Like every professor, with each new year, he is met with similar questions from his students and most of the time, he has answers to these questions.
However, every year he gets a couple of questions that he does not have the answers for. The book started out as sticky notes and research. Simply just a way to answer his students’ questions. But then he says he “had to start writing this down or I was going to forget it,” and the book was born. But as he was researching these topics, he was not entirely sure what to do with what he found. They were incredibly disorganized.
How was he going to organize his research and write a book in a way that was digestible to the common populace, and write it in a way that was also entertaining?
Given that Bezzerides is a college professor during the day and a husband and father back at home, he was only able to schedule one day a week where he was able to write, and in his words “I am a slow writer.” When he got all of his research done and outlined his chapter, he would only get a single-spaced page done per day. “Which is why the book took me five years,” he said with a laugh.
The professor told virtually no one of his book idea until he “really got my teeth into it” because he knew once he proposed the book to an editor, he would have a deadline.
The thing with nonfiction is that there almost always needs to be a through-line; however it can be hard to navigate that because it is very noticeable when the through-line is forced, which in turn hinders the writing.
Professor Bezzerides was able to split the book up into three parts based on different sections of the body: “Part One: It’s All In Your Head;” “Part Two: Achy-Breaky Parts;” and “Part Three: Bundles of Joy.”
One of the things Bezzerides wanted to focus on was menstruation, birth, etc. because it is not talked about often in books like “Evolution Gone Wrong.”
He also explains that this section was the hardest to research for because he had some basis for the first two parts. He could piece together why our vision was so bad, why our knees seem so fragile etc. But for “Part Three” he was virtually going in blind. In the end however, that section ended up being his favorite part of the book.
When asked if he plans to write another book in the future, Bezzerides confirms that he is researching for a book on allergies and autoimmune disorders but this one is being a bit harder to write.
You can point at parts of a human body and explain how and why they are shaped like that to a non-scientist. Trying to explain T Cells? That will be a little harder.
He hopes to have everything in order and to hear an update about the publishing process by the end of the year.