Athenaeum Literary Award Winner: The Beauty in Breaking with Michele Harper

219 South 6th Street,Philadelphia PA 19106

13 September, 2021

Description

Join us as we celebrate our 2020 Award Winner Michele Harper in conversation with writer Lorene Cary! The Athenaeum of Philadelphia, among the nation’s oldest membership libraries, presents its 2020 Literary Award to Michele Harper’s The Beauty in Breaking. The Literary Award honors the year’s most outstanding literary work by a Philadelphia-area author or a work that is about Philadelphia. On September 13 we will celebrate her award and the beginning of our Fall Programming season. In conversation with Michele will be Philadelphia memoir writer Lorene Cary. This event will be IN PERSON and LIVE STREAMED. Please note the two ticketing options during checkout. Live Stream attendees will be sent a link the morning of the event. In person attendees will be required to follow any COVID-19 protocols on the day of the event. Reception to follow. Books will be sold by HeadHouse Books. About Michele: Michele Harper has worked as an emergency room physician for more than a decade at various institutions, including as 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. The Beauty in Breaking is her first book. https://micheleharper.com/ About Lorene: Cary’s 2019 care-taking memoir, Ladysitting: My Year with Nana at the End of Her Century, published by W.W. Norton Books, is also available as an audiobook recording. The narrative travels through five generations to find the roots of family love and rupture. Ladysitting has been released in paperback, July 2020, and commissioned in 2021 as a play for Arden Theater. https://www.lorenecary.com/ https://philaathenaeum.org/ The Athenaeum was established in 1814 as a subscription library, at a time when the free public library system did not exist and collections of books, available for reading or research, were still mostly limited to institutions, schools or colleges. The Athenaeum of Philadelphia nurtures curiosity in members and neighbors, strengthening community through learning and discourse. The Athenaeum of Philadelphia is one of 16 membership libraries that collaborate through the Membership Libraries Group. Some, like the Charleston (est. 1748), New York Society (est. 1754), and Newport (est. 1741) libraries, date from the 18th Century.