Rita Carter was born in Essex, England, and trained as a journalist in London, where she spent five years as an anchor for the London nightly news program "Thames News." For the past ten years she has been a medical and science writer. She has contributed to a wide range of newspapers and magazines, including the Independent, New Scientist, Daily Mail, and Telegraph. She was twice awarded the Medical Journalists' Association prize for outstanding contribution to medical journalism. She is currently involved in a number of art-science projects directed at furthering public knowledge about the brain.