Victoria Costello

Victoria Costello is an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker turned science journalist and the author of memoir and prescriptive nonfiction books focusing on parenting, psychology, and health.

As a co-author Costello works with health and science experts on books for trade publishers.

As a ghostwriter for conventional and self published projects, Costello brings the voices and compelling stories of real people to life on the page.

She has recently completed her own “family memoir” titled A Lethal Inheritance. Read some on this site in My Works.

Due from Alpha Books/​Penguin Complete Idiot's Guide series in 2010 and 2011 are her co-authored titles, The Chemistry of Love, a guide to the neuroscience of relationships written with psychologist Maryanne Fisher, and A Guide to Child Psychology, written with preeminent child psychiatrist Jack Westman, M.D.

In print are her coauthored books The Parent's Everything Guide to Childhood OCD(Adams Media, 2008), and The Everything Guide to a Happy Marriage (Adams Media, 2009), both written with marriage and family therapist Stephen Martin.

Victoria Costello writes her own biweekly blog called Awakening Psyche on PsychologyToday.com, where she addresses mental health topics. She is a frequent public speaker on behalf of the Mental Health Association of San Francisco to corporate and community audiences.

In her print and television career, she specialized in digesting and translating technical and scientific materials into more colloquial terms. She won her 1995 Emmy for writing and producing a Disney TV special called “This Island Earth,” a look at the human health implications of endangered species that TV Guide called “enlightening and entertaining.” She produced a television documentary “Who Will Protect the Family” for PBS with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Frances Fitzgerald. Costello created film and print media on family planning programs and women’s maternal health in Africa and Central America for The United Nations Population Program’s Face to Face Campaign.

Based in San Francisco and New York City since 1998, she has worked as a web writer, editor and executive producer of web content for SchoolCity.com, a website serving teachers, parents and k-12 students, and MedicinePlanet.com, a travel medicine resource website. She is also a member in good standing of the following professional organizations: The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, The Authors Guild, The National Association of Science Writers, and the American Society of Journalists & Authors.