The Beauty in Breaking: Author Talk with Michele Harper

Michele Harper is a female African American emergency room physician in an overwhelmingly male and white profession. Brought up in Washington, D.C., in a complicated family, she went to Harvard, where she met her husband. They stayed together through medical school until two months before she was scheduled to join the staff of a hospital in central Philadelphia when he told her he couldn’t move with her. Her marriage at an end, Harper, began her new life in a new city, in a new job, as a newly single woman. As Harper learned to become an effective ER physician in the ensuing years, bringing insight and empathy to every patient encounter, she understood that each of us is broken—physically and emotionally. How we recognize those breaks, how we try to mend them, and where we go from there are all crucial parts of the healing process. This author talk with Michele Harper will cover many of the lessons she’s learned on her inspiring personal journey and the success of her New York Times bestselling memoir, The Beauty in Breaking. About the author: Michele Harper has worked as an emergency room physician for more than a decade at various institutions, including chief resident at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx and in the emergency department at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Philadelphia. She is a graduate of Harvard University and the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University.