LEWISTON — Lisa Genova, best-selling author of novels “Still Alice” and “Left Neglected,” will speak at Bates College, her alma mater, on Wednesday, Feb. 1.

The free talk will be at 7:30 p.m. in the Olin Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

A 1992 Bates graduate with a doctorate in neuroscience from Harvard, Genova is recognized for creating compelling fiction about characters afflicted with cognitive disorders.

“Genova is a master of getting into the heads of her characters, relating from the inside out what it’s like to suffer from a debilitating disease,” wrote a USA Today reviewer in 2011. “How she does it we don’t know, but she does, and brilliantly.”

 Genova’s fiction-writing debut was “Still Alice,” the story of Alice Howland, a cognitive psychology professor at Harvard who is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease at age 50 and struggles with her loss of memory and independence. Genova self-published the novel in 2007, only to see it picked up a year later by Simon & Schuster, whose edition became a New York Times best-seller.

 In 2009, the book was the No. 6 Book Group Favorite by Reading Group Choices, a Barnes & Noble discover pick, a Borders Book Club pick and a Target Book Club pick. There are more than 1 million copies in print and it has been translated into 25 languages.

 In 2011, Genova published her second New York Times best-seller, “Left Neglected.” Here, the protagonist is Sarah Nickerson, an intensely multitasking mother, wife and executive at the top of her game who suddenly suffers a traumatic brain injury. As she wills herself to regain her independence, Sarah learns that her real destiny may, in fact, lie far from the world she has built for herself.

Genova, who lives with her family on Cape Cod, is at work on a third novel, “Love Anthony,” about a boy with autism. Inspired by her grandmother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s to write “Still Alice,” Genova has also become an advocate for sufferers of the disease, and travels the world to speak about it. She has appeared on the “Diane Rehm Show,” CNN, Fox News and Canada AM.

For more information about the talk, call 786-6487.

Lisa Genova’s best-selling nove “Still Alice” is about a women suffering from Alzheimer’s.

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