Lisa Genova '92 is the author of "Still Alice" and "Left Neglected."

Lisa Genova ’92, author of the popular novels Still Alice and Left Neglected, speaks at Bates at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 1, in the Olin Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

This event is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please contact 207-786-6487.

Genova, who has a doctorate in neuroscience from Harvard, is recognized for creating compelling fiction about characters afflicted with cognitive disorders. Her talk is presented by the College Key Distinguished Alumni in Residence program, which brings Bates graduates prominent in their fields to campus to visit classes and meet with students and faculty, in addition to the public lecture.

“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 a million copies in print, and it has been translated into 25 languages.

In 2011, Genova published her second New York Times best-seller, the critically acclaimed Left Neglected (Gallery Books). Here the protagonist is Sarah Nickerson, an intensely multi-tasking 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.

At Bates, Genova graduated with a self-designed major in biopsychology. She never took a writing class, but was a gifted writer who knew the importance of telling stories, especially when it came to science.

“All good scientists, the ones who help the field think in an entirely new way, are storytellers,” Genova told a Bates Magazine interviewer in 2009. (Read the article.)

The Distinguished Alumni in Residence program was established in 2003 by the College Key, a Bates organization that recognizes and supports extraordinary achievement among current and past Bates students.

If you’re a student in Professor of Psychology John Kelsey’s neuroscience laboratory, you might get a chance to co-author a research article. And if you’re Kelsey, your students might inspire you to explore a new area of neuroscience. “My research is done with my students and through my students,” says Kelsey.

Over the years, around 50 of your students have published research with you. How do students get their names on a paper?

They have to contribute in some fundamental way to the ideas. If you hire undergraduates as techs, where they’re mostly doing the nuts and bolts, it’s tricky deciding if they’ve made a sufficient contribution to warrant authorship. But since most of my work is done around the senior thesis, ideas usually originate jointly. The students and I bounce ideas off each other and reformulate them. It’s a real give-and-take, so they have ownership of the ideas before they even start.

Using a rat model, much of your and your students’ research focuses on behavior around opiate addiction.

For a long time, the theory was that an addict was motivated by the aversive effects of withdrawal, what we call negative reinforcement: You take the drug to get rid of an aversive state. Later researchers, particularly Roy Wise, argued that positive reinforcement is critical: You take the drug because you like it. My and others’ work in the 1990s suggested that both reward and withdrawal are important.

Do the research topics change year to year in your lab?

In science, you usually make a find and then build on it. I tend to jump around. The first research we did on Parkinson’s disease was on NMDA receptors, special kinds of glutamate receptors that are heavily involved in learning. Then we switched to adenosine — completely unrelated, in some sense. This year we’ve switched to opiates and cannabinoids! I think a lot of it is me. I get bored; let’s jump around.

How do students react to this approach?

I think students like to delve into something new each year instead of feeling that they’re merely following up on Joe’s result on NMDA receptors.

What do you do to attract students to neuroscience or psychology?

One skill that I have, and I don’t have many, is recognizing good students early on and getting them interested. If I hear that so-and-so is good but hasn’t taken one of my classes, I’ll twist their arm a bit.

What if a student has divergent interests?

Katy Reedy ’06 was interested in psychology and creative writing. I encouraged her, and she majored in psych and after graduation did research with my former student, Bill Carlezon ’86, director of the Behavioral Genetics Laboratory at Harvard’s McLean Hospital. She’s now in graduate school…in English! I do feel a little guilt — maybe if I hadn’t been so pushy about neuroscience she would’ve stayed in English at Bates.

On the other hand, my thesis student Lisa Genova ’92 got her Ph.D. in neuroscience and just wrote a novel, Still Alice, about a fictional Harvard professor who develops Alzheimer’s. It was recently bought by Simon & Schuster.

What’s it like having a cadre of alums out there who’ve been through your lab?

When I go to the Society for Neuroscience and see 12 or 15 alums there, it’s terrific. At a place like Bates, you wonder, “What’s my legacy?” Research will be the legacy for some Bates faculty, and I publish regularly but it’s not earth-shattering. Research won’t be my legacy, as much as I would like it to be. It will be the alumni I’ve taught.

What qualities do you seek when the psychology department hires a new member?

A lot has to do with work ethic. We take this job and the students seriously, and we like and respect each other. We don’t socialize as a department; we don’t often meet that way. We basically do our job and we know everyone else is doing their job. So we have absolutely implicit trust in each other.

When you arrived in 1979, who modeled that ethic for you?

Bob Moyer and Drake Bradley would get up at 4 a.m. to get in here. Bob would go home eventually but Drake would be here all night. It was pretty clear those two had nothing in their lives but Bates! Dick Wagner was the chair. He hired well and was such a good mediator; he got people to work together. And, he did the administrative stuff so we didn’t have to futz with it. He protected us.

Were Drake and Bob here all hours for their students or their own research?

It was mostly student-driven, but that’s how we do our research. Research, teaching, and helping students are so commingled we can’t differentiate among them.

Lisa Genova ’92, whose self-published novel about a professor succumbing to early-onset Alzheimer’s disease became a best-seller earlier this year, offers a talk and reading at Bates on May 20.Sponsored by the Bates psychology department, the event is open to the public at no cost.

Genova’s debut novel Still Alice made news for both its literary quality and its unusual route to public attention. Unable to attract an agent, Genova published the book herself using an online service. Then word got around, enthusiasm snowballed and Genova signed a contract with Simon and Schuster — under whose imprint the book debuted at No. 5 on The New York Times bestseller list in January.

Still Alice is the story of 50-year-old Alice Howland, who is a celebrated Harvard professor, happily married and at the peak of her career, when she notices the first signs of a failing memory. As the disease progresses, she struggles to maintain her lifestyle and to live in the moment even as her sense of self is disappearing.

“As Alice laments, ‘I miss myself,’” wrote USA Today reviewer Craig Wilson. “A poignant portrait of Alzheimer’s, Still Alice is not a book you will forget.”

Genova graduated from Bates summa cum laude with a self-designed major in biopsychology and has a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Harvard. She has researched the molecular origins of depression, Parkinson’s disease, drug addiction and memory loss following stroke.

She is also an actress working in Boston theaters and independent films. She is working on her next novel for Simon and Schuster, Left Neglected.

• Wednesday, May 20, at 7:30 p.m.
• Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

Lisa Genova, a member of the Bates College class of 1992 whose self-published novel about a professor succumbing to early-onset Alzheimer’s disease became a best-seller earlier this year, offers a talk and reading at Bates at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 20, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

Sponsored by the Bates psychology department, the event is open to the public at no cost.

Genova’s debut novel Still Alice made news for both its literary quality and its unusual route to public attention. Unable to attract an agent, Genova published the book herself using an online service. Then word got around, enthusiasm snowballed and Genova signed a contract with Simon and Schuster — under whose imprint the book debuted at No. 5 on The New York Times bestseller list in January.

Still Alice is the story of 50-year-old Alice Howland, who is a celebrated Harvard professor, happily married and at the peak of her career, when she notices the first signs of a failing memory. As the disease progresses, she struggles to maintain her lifestyle and to live in the moment even as her sense of self is disappearing.

“As Alice laments, ‘I miss myself,’” wrote USA Today reviewer Craig Wilson. “A poignant portrait of Alzheimer’s, Still Alice is not a book you will forget.”

Genova graduated from Bates summa cum laude with a self-designed major in biopsychology and has a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Harvard. She has researched the molecular origins of depression, Parkinson’s disease, drug addiction and memory loss following stroke.

She is also an actress working in Boston theaters and independent films. She is working on her next novel for Simon and Schuster, Left Neglected.