In A Fatal Inheritance: How a Family Misfortune Revealed a Deadly Medical Mystery, Lawrence Ingrassia weaves his moving family story with a sweeping history of cancer research, delivering an intimate, gripping tale that sits at the intersection of memoir and medical thriller. Ingrassia lost his mother, two sisters, brother, and nephew to cancer—different cancers developing at different points throughout their lives. And while highly unusual, his family is not the only one to wonder whether their heartbreak is the result of unbelievable bad luck, or if there might be another explanation.

Through meticulous research and riveting storytelling, Ingrassia takes us from the 1960s—when Frederick Pei Li, MD and Joseph Fraumeni Jr., MD first met, not yet knowing that they would help make a groundbreaking discovery that would affect cancer patients for decades to come—to present day, as Ingrassia and countless others continue to unpack and build upon Li and Fraumeni’s initial discoveries, and to understand what this means for their families.

Ingrassia is an author and award-winning journalist, having worked as a senior editor at the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times before retiring from newspapers in 2017. In Ihis decades-long newspaper career, journalists directed by him won five Pulitzer Prizes – for national reporting, explanatory reporting, international reporting, and commentary – as well as Polk, Loeb and other awards.

Ingrassia will be in conversation with Joanne Lipman, a pioneering journalist and the bestselling author of Next! The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work and the No. 1 bestseller That’s What She Said: What Men and Women Need to Know About Working Together. She has served as Editor-in-Chief of USA Today, USA Today Network, Conde Nast Portfolio, and The Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Journal, leading those organizations to six Pulitzer Prizes. She is also an on-air CNBC contributor and Yale University journalism lecturer.

This event suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.