Carol Cassella is a bestselling novelist and practicing anesthesiologist. Born in Dallas, Texas, she lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington with her husband and two sets of twins.
Biography
Birth and Family
Carol Cassella was born as Carol Elise Wiley in Dallas, Texas. She is the youngest of three daughters to Katherine and Ray Wiley, and graduated from Highland Park High School in Dallas, Texas in 1975.
Present
Carol married Stephen Rowan Cassella in 1991 and now lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington. They are the parents of fraternal twins born in 1995, and identical twins born in 1996.
Education
Carol has a degree in English Literature from Duke University, where she was a member of Pi Beta Phi sorority. She attended medical school at in Houston, Texas and was president of her medical school class three of the four years. She received her medical degree in 1986 and completed her internship at Baylor-St. Lukes Affiliated Hospitals in Houston, Texas before moving to Seattle where she completed her residency in internal medicine at . In 1992 she returned to Virginia Mason for training in anesthesiology. Carol is board certified in both internal medicine and anesthesiology.
Career
Early career
Immediately after college Carol worked for in New York City before deciding to attend medical school.
Later career
Carol is a practicing anesthesiologist in the Seattle area and also a published novelist. She was the founder of Mind to Mind, the literary section in Anesthesiology, the Journal of the , and served as associate editor of the section from 2009 to 2016. She has been a Wall Street Journal Expert Panelist on Healthcare. She is also a founding member of , a non-profit supporting literacy and reading in the Pacific Northwest. Prior to writing fiction, Carol wrote medically centered articles for The profiling their grant recipients working in low resource countries around the world. She published her first novel OXYGEN in 2008.
Medical career
After completing her internal medicine residency at Virginia Mason Medical Center, Carol practiced primary care at , and , with a special interest in cross-cultural medicine. In 1992 she began her residency in anesthesiology at and now works as a staff anesthesiologist in the Seattle area. Carol serves on the health care advisory committee for BOSIA, the Bainbridge Ometepe Sister Islands Association. BOSIA is a non-profit, non-partisan organization focused on people-to-people exchange between residents of in Washington State and in Lake Nicaragua. She enjoys working as a volunteer for charitable medical trips working in low resource countries, including rural Costa Rica, Thailand, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Bhutan and Cuba.
Literary career
Though she studied literature and wrote some fiction throughout her life, Carol did not begin a serious writing career until she was in her forties. “The unfulfilled desire to write fiction was a personal disappointment for a long time--years, really. I knew I wanted to write; I felt the drive to write, but I wasn't ready to devote myself to the task with the discipline it takes to succeed. I finally had to confront myself and decide to actively pursue writing fiction or accept that I was giving up. In the end, the idea of letting go of a lifelong dream was more painful than daring to try." In 2001 she enrolled in creative writing classes and began writing her first novel,, which was published in 2008 by Simon & Schuster. The novel was a national bestseller, nominated for the Washington State Book Award, and an Indie Next Pick in 2008. Her second novel, ', was also an Indie Next Pick in 2011. Her third novel, ', was an Indie Next selection for March 2014, as well as a Library Reads selection, and won the ’s BuzzBooks contest. Her books have been highlighted as top choices by , , , , , , and , among others. All of her novels draw from her personal experience as a physician, her role as a mother, and her interest in medical ethics and the complexities of contemporary healthcare. Prior to focusing on fiction, Carol wrote informational articles for from 1999 to 2001. She has also been published in the , , , and other media outlets.
Carol is a founding member of Seattle 7 Writers, an organization founded in Seattle with the mission to support literacy organizations in the community and to create connections between writers, readers, booksellers, and librarians.
