Sarah Stewart Johnson 

Sarah Stewart Johnson is an assistant professor at Georgetown University, where she studies planetary science and is currently writing on a book about Mars.  She was awarded the Ellen Meloy Desert Writer's Award in 2013, a fact she still has trouble believing. She has always been drawn to far-off places, and her field work has taken her to the dusty expanses of the Australian Outback, the polar deserts of Antarctica, and the summits of Hawaiian and Patagonian volcanos.