Anita M. Harris has written three nonfiction books and has two more in on the way. An award-winning journalist and communications consultant, she recently served as a lead writer for a major MIT report, “Convergence, the Future of Health.” She has taught writing and journalism at Harvard, Yale, Tufts and Simmons Universities–and she blogs at New Cambridge Observer. See complete bio.
In 1971, FBI Director J Edgar Hoover accused nuns, priests and other religious people of conspiring to kidnap presidential advisor Henry Kissinger and blow up underground heating tunnels in Washington, DC. When the group went on trial in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a young woman named Ani and three of her college friends founded an alternative weekly newspaper called the Harrisburg Independent Press (HIP) to cover the trial, the town, and the times.
Ani (short for Anita and meaning “I” in Hebrew) will go on to become a national journalist; 50 years later, she has written a memoir/social history about those amazing days.
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ITHACA DIARIES, by Anita M Harris, is a coming of age memoir set at Cornell University in the tumultuous 1960s. The story is told in first person from the point of view of a smart, sassy, funny, scared, sophisticated yet naïve college student who can laugh at herself while she and the world around her are having a nervous breakdown. Based on author Anita Harris’ diaries and letters, interviews and other primary and secondary accounts of the time. READ MORE
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More information at http//ithacadiaries.com.
BROKEN PATTERNS, PROFESSIONAL WOMEN & THE QUEST FOR A NEW FEMININE IDENTITY, by Anita Harris, places modern American professional women –and their mothers and grandmothers–in remarkable historical context. Based on interviews with women who entered male-dominated careers in the 1970s and 1980s, the book outlines a “push-pull” pattern of generational and historical development going back to the Colonial period in America.
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More information at http://Brokenpatternsbook.com
PANDEMIC JOURNEY: BEAUTY AMIDST THE RUINS
A Photobook. Harvard Square, December, 2020.
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BOOKS IN PROGRESS
Philadelphia Stories tells the story of a tumultuous year (1970-1971) through the eyes of 21-year-old Ani, an Ivy League grad, as she runs from job to job, place to place. She encounters coal miners with black lung disease in West Virginia; works for a sleazy Philadelphia pol who spends his days staring at her legs; drives cross-country with 2 British hippies, both named John, who pick up every derelict along the way. She attends a formal inaugural ball wearing a skirt made of curtain material and safety pins; counsels teens in the Philadelphia ghetto who show her how to make a sawed-off shotgun; hitchhikes in Europe—all the while trying to maintain a love relationship that could lead to marriage –yet wanting to escape from it.
It’s a story told with humor and sensitivity about a young woman’s attempts to find herself and her place in a turbulent world during the Nixon Administration and the Vietnam War. It will be of interest to college students and recent grads; to baby boomers; and to anyone interested in the psychological, political and social forces that impacted women in times past and continue to affect them today.
MIDCENTURY MODERN WOMAN tells the story of irreverent, humorous, adventurous Sara Richman from 1941, when she graduates from college and moves to New York City, until after World War II, when she marries and has her first child. Drawn from more than 1000 pages of diaries and letters, the book provides an intimate view of the life and loves of a young woman, the societal issues of her day, and the city she adores.