About me
I'm a science and environment writer and communications consultant based in Whāingaroa/Raglan, on Aotearoa New Zealand's wild west coast.
I write about the living world: ecosystems, places, people, and the threads of connection and imprints of rupture between them.
My journalism appears in Hakai, Mongabay, Biographic and Atlas Obscura, while my personal essays have run in Noēma Magazine, North & South and The Spinoff.
I'm drawn to stories that pull the vast and the intimate together: ecological change at the community scale, and the particular ways that big shifts arrive in specific places and lives. (Also, anything to do with frogs or bats.)
Alongside journalism and creative non-fiction, I collaborate with research and development organisations on editorial and communications projects, from brand strategy and annual reports to op eds, blogs, website content and curriculum development.
Regular clients include Landscape Alliance (formerly CIFOR-ICRAF), the Global Landscapes Forum and the International Livestock Research Institute, while past and current collaborators range from UN Environment Programme, the World Bank and the German Development Bank (GiZ) to WWF, the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, and more.
I was editor-in-chief of Forests News in 2023–24 and am currently the lead writer for an EU-funded conservation and livelihoods project in Papua New Guinea’s Managalas Conservation Area. I also create and edit content for the Australian agency Cultivate Communications across environment, development and social change.
I have an MSc in Development Studies (Distinction) from Victoria University of Wellington, and a background in research and community development across oceans and disciplines: from interviewing young parents in Chile to surveying villagers about sail transport in Fiji and playing drums with kids in addiction services in Auckland.
I've been putting words to work since 2017, in the midst of raising two kids, moonlighting as a mediocre aerial acrobat, and getting the urge to be an alpaca farmer well and truly out of my system.
You can reach me at monica.alice.evans [at] gmail.com, or find me on LinkedIn.
What people say
“Working with Monica is an absolute pleasure. She brings strategic insight to any project, and has been amazing in helping us improve structure and refine our messaging to craft a compelling, coherent story. Her expertise and professionalism make her an invaluable asset to our science communication efforts. I will always work with her.”
— Anja Gassner, Director of Europe, Landscape Alliance“Monica is brilliant at breaking down complex topics so that anyone can understand them, and she makes them fun to read, too. She's incredibly consistent, speedy and easy to work with, and her writing is always clean and well researched. If you need a writer to get a job done quickly and thoroughly, Monica's the one!”
— Ming Chun Tang, Senior Editor: Landscape News, Global Landscapes Forum “Monica is one of the most amazing writers out there: she's extremely accurate, fast and inspired. Her knowledge of ecological themes is vast and profound. You can't go wrong with her.”
— Fabio Ricci, Global Project Communications Coordinator, Landscape Alliance