The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Mone, Michael Moyer, Scott Mowbray, Katie Orenstein, Adam Penenberg, Michael Pollan,
Corey Powell, Mark Rotella, Lizzie Skurnick, Stacy Sullivan, Paul Tough, Jonathan Weiner,
and Barry Yeoman. Special thanks to Dinty W. Moore, Diana Hume George, and the many
other wonderful writers I taught with at the now-sadly-defunct Mid-Atlantic Creative Nonfiction
Summer Writers Conference. I miss you all. Thanks also to the editors who worked with me
on my early stories related to the book: Patti Cohen at the New York Times, Sue De Pasquale
at Johns Hopkins Magazine, Sally Flecker at Pitt Magazine, and James Ryerson at The New
York Times Magazine, who always makes my work better. Also to my fellow bloggers on Sci-
enceBlogs.com, the ever helpful and inspiring Invisible Institute, the amazing Birders, and my
wonderful Facebook and Twitter friends, who provided resources, laughter, encouragement,
and celebration of moments big and small. Thanks also to Jon Gluck for helpful early editorial
advice. And to Jackie Heinze, who amazingly gave me her car so I could disappear into the
middle of nowhere for months to write. Special thanks to Albert French, who helped me take
the first difficult steps toward writing this book by challenging me to a race and letting me win.
I owe deep gratitude to all of my former colleagues on the National Book Critics Circle
board of directors, whose devotion to great books helped keep me inspired, motivated, and
thinking critically. Special thanks to Rebecca Miller, Marcela Valdes, and Art Winslow, who
provided years of encouragement, read drafts of the book, and offered insightful comments.
As did John Freeman, who I thank for the hours we spent talking about writing and this book,
and for Ford and friendship.
My agent, Simon Lipskar at Writers House, has my endless thanks for fighting with and for
me when others wouldn’t, for being a rock star and a friend. I knew there was a reason I liked
you. As is true for many books these days, mine struggled to find its way to press. Three pub-
lishing houses and four editors later, I feel extremely lucky to have landed at Crown with
Rachel Klayman as my editor. She inherited my book, immediately adopted it as her own, and
never faltered in her support of it. She devoted more of her time and heart to this book than I
could have dreamed of. Every writer should be fortunate enough to work with such a talented
editor, and to have a publishing house as devoted as Crown has been. I’m deeply grateful to
everyone on Team Immortal at Crown: their passion for this book and the incredible work they
did to send it into the world as best they could has been astonishing and humbling. Special
thanks to Tina Constable for her undying support, and for being there for the long haul; to
Courtney Greenhalgh, my wonderful and tireless publicist; to Patty Berg, for her creative pur-
suit of every marketing opportunity; and to Amy Boorstein, Jacob Bron stein, Stephanie Chan,
Whitney Cookman, Jill Flaxman, Philip Patrick, Annsley Rosner, Courtney Snyder, Barbara
Sturman, Katie Wainwright, and Ada Yonenaka. I feel so fortunate to have worked with you
all. The same is true of Leila Lee and Michael Gentile in the academic marketing department