About Zara Stone
Zara Stone is a tech culture journalist at The San Francisco Standard and the author of two books. Her most recent, Killer Looks: The Forgotten History of Plastic Surgery In Prisons (Prometheus Books, 2021), received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was selected for San Francisco Public Library’s One City One Book: San Francisco Reads. Her first book, The Future of Science Is Female: The Brilliant Minds Shaping the 21st Century, was written to encourage young readers into STEM.
Zara has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Wired, Forbes, Fortune, The Information, Cosmopolitan, VICE, the BBC, ABC News, and CNN, among others. Her on-air experience includes a stint presenting technology news for Fusion, an ABC News/Univision collaboration, and guest appearances on the BBC, Sky News, and ABC Radio.
Her reporting has been supported by a Rockefeller Archive Center fellowship, a Marcus Center Fellowship, a Dow Jones News Fund fellowship, and a Mozilla OpenNews grant. She is a board member at The San Francisco Writer’s Grotto and has been a guest speaker at Stanford University (twice, as part of Stanford Humanities programming).
Zara grew up in London, UK, before moving to the US in 2012 to attend Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She lives in San Francisco.
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Praise for Killer Looks
“Riveting and well-researched…. Graceful prose bolsters this fascinating account. This is essential reading for anyone interested in criminal rehabilitation.”
— Publishers Weekly ★ Starred Review
“One surgeon’s unconventional project provides the narrative spine for a fascinating, often shocking look inside the American prison system. Expertly and rigorously researched. Stone writes with compassion and authority. I won’t soon forget this book.”
— Mary Roach, New York Times-bestselling author
“Zara Stone explores how the emergence of plastic surgery in prisons underscores society’s obsession with beauty.”
— Elle Magazine
“Through her engaging and insightful reporting, Zara Stone reveals a dark side of the history of plastic surgery.”
— Dr. Sam P. Most, Chief, Division of Facial Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery, Stanford University School of Medicine
“Zara Stone has written a compelling, jaw-dropping book exploring one of the few unknown corners of our plastic surgery obsession. A must-read.”
— Nancy Etcoff, Ph.D., author of Survival of the Prettiest, Harvard Medical School director of Aesthetics and Well-Being, MGH Department of Psychiatry
“Zara Stone shines a Sing Sing-wattage searchlight on the relationship between ugliness and criminality. Killer Looks, capturing the nuances of a seven-decade social experiment with convicts, is a tour de force.”
— Joan Kron, former beauty editor, Allure Magazine
“Killer Looks is a stunning exploration of how our age-old obsession with beauty fueled research in America’s prisons. She brings to life not only the inmates who received facelifts, nose jobs and tummy tucks in the name of that experiment, but also the corrections officials, judges and doctors looking for a new approach to recidivism.”
— Katherine Seligman, winner of Barbara Kingsolver’s PEN/Bellwether Prize
“Beauty can be a privilege and a curse.” — Amanda Knox, host of Labyrinths: Getting Lost with Amanda Knox LISTEN HERE
Contact
General inquiries & media bookings: zara@zarastone.net
Literary agent: Eliza Rothstein, Inkwell Management — eliza@inkwellmanagement.com Publicist: Jess Kastner — jkastner@rowman.com