
Shelley Wood is an award-winning author, journalist, and editor, currently based in BC. Her latest novel, the Leap Year Gene, is a medical mystery that spans decades and takes you around the world — a tale of love, a test of empathy, and the most memorable events of the 20th century.
Interviewed by Ash Hampson
Ash Hampson (AH): It goes without saying that the research done for your latest book, the Leap Year Gene, is impeccable. Are the topics of eugenics, genetics, and gene therapy something you’ve previously had an interest in, or did you take a leap, so to speak, and immerse yourself in something entirely different?
Shelley Wood (SW): In ‘real life’ I work full-time as a medical journalist (although I myself am not a scientist or doctor), but my first novel, The Quintland Sisters, had no medicine in it except for the ‘miracle’ survival of the quintuplets themselves. For my second novel, I knew I wanted to draw on some of my skills as a medical researcher and interviewer, so when I had the idea for a little girl who aged more slowly than everyone around her, I decided I would make this a genetic condition. At first I had the overly ambitious idea of using Kit’s rare gene as a vehicle for exploring the history of genetic discovery but quickly realized I’d bitten off more than I could chew! Also, I might be in danger of writing a book that was deadly boring. As I went along, what proved even more fascinating to me than the early gene research over a century ago was the response of society more generally to those discoveries, and how ideas of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ genes and fears of ‘defectives’ were woven into the cultural fabric. At different points of the book, I did have to do a deeper dive into understanding DNA and genetic mutation and gene editing and this was tough for me! But I think there has always been a divide between people actually grappling with medical and scientific concepts and those who don’t: someone gets a diagnosis or we learn of a new disease or virus, and that can be terrifying. It is as true today as it was a century ago that obscure illnesses or biological differences are scary for people who aren’t living with them or don’t understand them, and that has led to a lot of misconception and pain. I also like the idea that Kit’s rare and invisible condition is something anyone could have — someone you pass on the street might have a gene for aging more slowly, and we wouldn’t know, and we wouldn’t be afraid of it, or fascinated by it, and we wouldn’t label it as a mutation or superpower.
AH: Has your work with the Cardiovascular Research Foundation and Medscape Cardiology influenced or inspired any of your writing? If so, are issues and topics in medicine something you’ve always taken an interest in, translating work to writing?
SW: I know now that I became a journalist because I loved writing, and was drawn to health topics because it is a universal human concern, but I opted for journalism because I was worried I didn’t have any ‘stories’ in me to write fiction. As I mentioned earlier, since I continue to work full time in medicine, it made sense to me to try to repurpose some of the skills I have acquired through my day job. I’m also fascinated with the people who work in science and medicine, who are driven by the urge to help others, or by unlocking the secrets of human biology. I’m not one of those people! But I admire them and am intrigued by what makes them tick.
AH: Both the Leap Year Gene and your debut novel, the Quintland Sisters, address medical marvels as well as the often unwanted, and dangerous, attention they attract. With the Quintland Sisters, what led you to write a fictionalized narrative, albeit full of historic research, over a non-fiction account?
SW: I actually quit my job (as a cardiology editor at WebMD) to try to write my first novel but at the time I quit, I really had no idea what to write about. I stumbled across a photo of the Dionne quintuplets and was astonished I’d never heard of them. After a bit of research I realized that while several nonfiction books had been written about them, decades earlier, nobody had tried to approach their story through historical fiction, which I think draws in a different, broader audience. It’s quite a coincidence that I have twice ended up writing about medical marvels and didn’t even realize this until my second book was in the process of being published. For the Dionne sisters, I would have taken a very different approach had I wanted to write a nonfiction book, but I felt strongly that this had already been done — most importantly by the quintuplets themselves. By inventing a fictional nurse who was present at their birth and was viewing their incredible story from ‘inside,’ I felt I could tell their story in a new way and, ideally, spur people to go and find out more about their true, stranger-than-fiction lives. I could also imagine a person who loved them purely, just for who they were, who wasn’t in one camp or another, and wasn’t caught up (at least at first) in their financial potential and could bear witness as much to the people around the sisters as the sisters themselves. In some ways this book does something similar in that it is as concerned as much with Kit’s family and how their lives are altered by her condition as it is with Kit herself.
AH: You mentioned that you opted for journalism because you were worried you didn’t have any ‘stories’ in you to write fiction, but ultimately left your job to try to write your first novel. What made you rethink your decision and go for it?
SW: I had a terrible year in 2013: my mother died quite suddenly, a best friend had a terrible accident, and some changes at work required me to lay off colleagues I loved and admired. Sometimes bad can come from good — I had to ask myself what I really wanted to do with my time on earth and the answer was: I wanted to try to write.
AH: Are there any authors you’re looking forward to seeing at the festival? Anyone you admire or whose work you’ve read?
SW: Yes! I’m looking forward to meeting the two writers in my session, Scott Alexander Howard and Yeji Y. Ham, whose books I loved. And I got to read an advanced copy of Maia Caron’s The Last Secret, so I would love to get to meet her in person.