Rebecca Skloot, the author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, will speak at the University of Vermont on Tuesday, Oct. 11 at 5:30 p.m. in Ira Allen Chapel.
The event is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. Tickets are available now to UVM students, faculty and staff at the third floor information desk in the Davis Center during Davis Center business hours. UVM faculty, staff and students will receive one ticket per UVM ID. On Oct. 11 starting at 8 a.m., tickets will be available to the general public, as well as the UVM community, at the Davis Center information desk until 3 p.m.
Skloot is an award winning science writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine; O, The Oprah Magazine; Discover; and many other publications. She specializes in narrative science writing and has explored a wide range of topics, including goldfish surgery, tissue ownership rights, race and medicine, food politics and packs of wild dogs in Manhattan. She has worked as a correspondent for WNYC’s Radiolab and PBS’s Nova ScienceNOW. She and her father, Floyd Skloot, are co-editors of The Best American Science Writing 2011.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was chosen as a best book of 2010 by more than 60 media outlets, including Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, O, The Oprah Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio, People Magazine, The New York Times, and U.S. News and World Report. It has received widespread critical acclaim, with reviews appearing in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Science, and many others.
Dwight Garner of the The New York Times wrote, “I put down Rebecca Skloot’s first book, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” more than once. Ten times, probably. Once to poke the fire. Once to silence a pinging BlackBerry. And eight times to chase my wife and assorted visitors around the house, to tell them I was holding one of the most graceful and moving nonfiction books I’ve read in a very long time … It has brains and pacing and nerve and heart.”
Incoming first-year students and transfer students were required to read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks over the summer.