Community college assignment evovles into exhaustively researched book

Rebecca Skloot's "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" reaches No. 4 on Amazon Books Bestsellers List

Feature profile for The Commercial Appeal

February 21, 2010

For Rebecca Skloot, creative nonfiction professor at the University of Memphis, immortality is at hand with her new book, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" (Crown, $26).

Born in Springfield, Ill., Skloot moved to Portland, Ore., early with her father, author Floyd Skloot, and mother, Betsy McCarthy, a hospital administrator and "professional knitter" who has published a book on the subject.

A self-proclaimed "derelict kid," Skloot failed her first year of high school and didn't excel academically until forced to attend community college at the age of 16 to make up high school credits.

"I had some issues with the traditional school system and eventually ended up at this alternative high school. ... It was like a hippie school, like a holdover from Oregon in the '60s, where we had dream studies instead of science," she said ... (read more)