Rebecca Skloot

Rebecca L. Skloot is an American science writer specializing in science and medicine. Her first book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, was one of the best-selling new books of 2010, staying on The New York Times Bestseller list for over six years and eventually reaching #1. It was adapted into a movie by George C. Wolfe, which premiered on HBO on April 22, 2017, and starred Rose Byrne as Skloot and Oprah Winfrey as Lacks's daughter Deborah.

Rebecca was born in Springfield, Illinois. She is the daughter of poet, novelist, and essayist Floyd Skloot and Betsy McCarthy, a professional knitter and pattern book author. But, Skloot said, "in the Pacific Northwest, [her] roots [are] half New York Jew and half Midwestern Protestant." She received her high school diploma from Metropolitan Learning Center in Portland, Oregon.

After attending Portland Community College and becoming a Veterinary Technician, she received a BS in biological sciences from Colorado State University and an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Pittsburgh. She is a former vice president of the National Book Critics Circle. In addition, she has taught creative writing and science journalism at the University of Pittsburgh, New York University, and the University of Memphis.

Skloot has published over 200 featured stories and essays. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, O: The Oprah Magazine, Discover, and New York magazine. Skloot is also a contributing editor at Popular Science and has worked as a correspondent for NPR's Radiolab and PBS's NOVA scienceNOW.

Her first book, the #1 New York Times bestselling The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, is about Henrietta Lacks and the immortal cell line (known as HeLa) that came from her cancer cells in 1951. It was named a New York Times notable book and selected as the best book of the year by more than 60 publications. In addition, it was made into an HBO film produced by Oprah Winfrey and Alan Ball, with Rose Byrne portraying Skloot.

In reviewing the book, Karen Long quotes Skloot and describes the long process of finding a publisher: "The Lackses challenged everything I thought I knew about faith, science, journalism, and race," Skloot writes in her prologue. Stubbornly, she spent a decade telling this story, learning as much from the family as she could dig up herself. The book went through three publishing houses and four editors." Skloot and Henrietta's daughter Deborah formed a link in the writing of this book, which Deborah sees as her mother's hand guiding them.

Her second book, exploring the science and ethics of human–animal relationships, was put under contract with Crown Publishing Group in 2011. Her past work with animals in shelters, as a vet tech, in research facilities, and at an animal morgue prompted her interest in the ethical controversies surrounding animal use for science. She discussed the book's topics at the Chicago Humanities Festival in 2013. In addition, she spoke with researchers at Harvard University about it in 2015.