The Stories of the Women in Fluids Initiative: Our Origins and Purpose*

The motivating force behind The Stories of Women in Fluids Initiative is to provide a written guidepost for mentorship and to inspire girls and women alike to pursue successful careers in fluid dynamics. Our volunteer effort started at the 2022 APS DFD November meeting within the Women in Fluids Networking lunch with a simple QR code and a question "What stories can we tell girls and women to encourage them to join us in this field?" Since that event, we have grown to 40+ members ranging in experience from graduate students to faculty and the effort has evolved to include two concurrent and separate anthologies. The first focuses on personal essays to encourage and inspire middle-grade girls to pursue a career in fluid dynamics; and the second highlights personal career narratives to encourage and support other women professionals already in the field of fluid dynamics. A well-told story has the power to enliven a topic and inspire an audience to action, possibly even changing lives. The approach of our initiative is to use our stories - both scientific and personal narratives - to address many of the actions identified to close the STEM gender gap, including emphasizing strong and visible women (especially women of color), providing positive messages, and working to attract and retain women in fluid dynamics. We've partnered with Cosmic Writers, a 501(c)(3) organization, to develop materials to train our volunteer authors in the nuances of writing these two types of narratives. Our efforts have led to the creation of a new writing genre -- science storytelling, aimed at writing about science in a way that not only conveys the science but allows the reader to envision themselves working in the field. This presentation, which kicks off the Minisymposium "The Stories of Women in Fluids", will share how we got started, where we are now, and our longer-term plans to publish these anthologies (and possibly more).