Winkelman, Carol

PERSONAL: Female.

ADDRESSES: Home—Chapel Hill, NC. Office—Duke University, Institutional Review Board, Box 2991, Medical Center, Durham, NC 27710. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Adams Media, 57 Littlefield St., Avon, MA 02322. E-mail—winke002@mc.duke.edu; carol.winkelman@duke.edu.

CAREER: Writer and educator. Duke University, Durham, NC, instructor and science writer in Institutional Review Board department. Conducts medical writing workshops at university and federal agencies in United States and abroad; has also taught writing at University of California at Irvine and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

AWARDS, HONORS: Pulitzer Prize nomination, for articles on assisted reproduction.

WRITINGS:

The Complete Guide to Pregnancy after Thirty: From Conception to Delivery—All You Need to Know to Make the Right Decisions, Adams Media (Avon, MA), 2002.

Articles have appeared in the Miami Herald, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Chapel Hill News, and Southern Exposure.

SIDELIGHTS: Carol Winkelman is a medical writer who became interested in older women having babies when she began exploring her own options for having a child while in her forties and the pregnancy was considered high risk. "It can be overwhelming," Winkelman wrote in article for PersonalMD.com, referring to the vast amounts of information available on pregnancy and the various ways of becoming pregnant, both naturally and artificially. In an effort to make that information available to more women, Winkelman wrote The Complete Guide to Pregnancy after Thirty: From Conception to Delivery—All You Need to Know to Make the Right Decisions.

The book provides a comprehensive look at becoming pregnant with the older woman in mind and also discusses motherhood and raising the child or children. In addition to delving into such topics as the various ways to become pregnant, including fertility treatments and egg donation, Winkelman addresses the "high-risk"" issues older women are concerned about and discusses various approaches to solving real or potential problems through high-tech medical interventions, genetic testing, and nutritional needs. The book includes numerous real-life stories from mothers, doctors, and midwives, and experts also answer questions about older pregnancies.

Writing in Midwifery Today, Jill Cohen commented that Winkleman, "presents her information in such an unbiased way," creating a text that "is current, accurate and informative." Cohen dubbed The Complete Guide to Pregnancy after Thirty "an excellent book," adding: "The positive outlook and new facts and statistics presented are reassuring for women wanting to become pregnant later in life." A Publishers Weekly contributor felt that the anecdotes in the book might be "distracting" to those people looking for "a quick medical reference," but added, "In any case, the breadth of material covered here should make this book appealing to women looking for a single-volume resource on midlife pregnancy."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Midwifery Today, summer, 2002, Jill Cohen, review of The Complete Guide to Pregnancy after Thirty: From Conception to Delivery—All You Need to Know to Make the Right Decisions, p. 66.

Publishers Weekly, February 18, 2002, review of The Complete Guide to Pregnancy after Thirty, p. 92.

ONLINE

PersonalMD.com, http://www.personalmd.com/ (May 9, 2002), review of The Complete Guide to Pregnancy after Thirty.