Jay Dixit is an award-winning science writer, journalist, and storytelling teacher whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Slate, Wired, and Psychology Today.
Jay attended Yale University, where he studied nonfiction writing under Fred Strebeigh and Robert Stone, and graduated cum laude with distinction in the major. His senior thesis was published in The Journal of Social Issues and has been cited more than 300 times, and two of the magazine articles he wrote as an undergrad are still taught in Yale’s nonfiction writing classes.
Jay got his start as a journalist covering college life for Rolling Stone, then went on to cover comedy for The New York Times before specializing in psychology and neuroscience. As a psychology writer, Jay writes for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wired, and Slate, and his work appears in the anthology The Best of Technology Writing.
Jay also served as Senior Editor at Psychology Today—where he covered personality, neuroscience, behavioral economics, decision making, learning and memory, social influence and persuasion, consumer behavior, happiness, love and relationships, and attraction and sex—writing and editing many of the magazine’s highest-selling cover stories. Later, he joined The Neuroleadership Institute, where he writes about the neuroscience of diversity and inclusion.
As an interviewer, Jay has spoken to Spike Lee, Tim Roth, Willem Dafoe, Tony Robbins, Eugene Mirman, Kristen Schaal, Valerie Plame, Bob Mankoff, Will Shortz, Greg Giraldo, Paula Scher, and Todd Hanson, as well as researchers such as Dan Ariely, Jonathan Haidt, Mihály Csikszentmihályi, and Helen Fisher. Jay also conducted George Carlin’s last interview—which the legendary comedian called the “most complete interview” of his life.
Jay has taught storytelling as a creative writing professor at Yale University, and he’s lectured at Columbia University and NYU. Jay is the Founder of Storytelling.NYC, through which he teaches storytelling classes, writing workshops, and corporate training to companies in New York City and across the country, including LG, Redfin, and Citigroup. He’s also the winner of The Moth, a live stage storytelling competition based in New York, and his story “My Father’s Love” appears on The Moth Radio Hour and NPR and is the basis for the upcoming motion picture In Transit.
