The author of the bestselling book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Crown, 2010), Rebecca Skloot, will give a lecture at 4 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 3, as part of the 2010-2011 Lyceum Series at North Carolina A&T State University.

Skloot is an award-winning science writer whose articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine; O, The Oprah Magazine; Discover; Columbia Journalism Review; and elsewhere. She is a contributing editor for Popular Science magazine and has also been a correspondent for NPR and PBS.

A former vice president of the National Book Critics Circle, she is on the faculty at the University of Memphis, where she teaches creative nonfiction, and she blogs at Culture Dish, hosted by Seed Magazine's science blogs. Skloot has an undergraduate degree in biomedical science from Colorado State University and an M.F.A. in nonfiction writing from the University of Pittsburgh.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells the enthralling story of the forgotten woman behind one of the most important tools in modern medicine, and of Lacks’ descendants, many of whom feel betrayed by the scientific establishment.

Born in 1920, in Clover, Va., Lacks was a poor tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors. In 1951, she developed a strangely aggressive cancer, and doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital took a tissue sample without her knowledge. She died without knowing that her cells would become immortal—the first to grow and survive indefinitely in culture.

HeLa cells, as they are called, were essential to developing the polio vaccine. They also have aided in the development of in-vitro fertilization, cloning and gene mapping, and have helped us to better understand the workings of cancer and innumerable viruses. Even today, HeLa is the most widely used cell line in labs worldwide, bought and sold by the billions.

After learning about the HeLa cell line in high school, Rebecca Skloot became consumed by curiosity about the woman behind the cells. During the decade it took her to chase down and chronicle this story, she journeyed from state-of-the-art scientific laboratories to the tobacco fields of southern Virginia to East Baltimore, where the Lacks family lives today.

Skloot spent years winning the trust of Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who longed to know more about her mother and to better understand the science behind her cells. With this book, we discover that Henrietta’s husband and children did not find out about her "immortality," or the enormous profits her cells had generated, until more than 20 years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using blood samples from her family in research without informed consent. And, while biotech companies had made millions selling HeLa, many of Henrietta’s descendants could not even afford health insurance.

Following the lecture, there will be a panel discussion, Q&A session, and a book signing with Skloot. The lecture and related events will be held in Memorial Student Union, Stallings Ballroom, and are free and open to the public. For more information, call or email Beverly Grier, chair of the text-in-community program, (336) 256-2165 or bcgrier@ncat.edu.