From Homeless to Harvard

Sonoma Speaker Series on March 23

Liz Murray is the once-homeless daughter of two loving but deeply-drug dependent parents, who raised herself from living on the streets of New York City to earning a full scholarship to Harvard University.

Her riveting memoir, “Breaking Night,” was the basis for an Emmy-nominated film, “From Homeless To Harvard,” and she will tell her story of survival, resilience and the power of believing what is possible at the Sonoma Speaker Series on Monday, March 23.

Sleeping in subway cars, empty buildings, friends’ apartments, stairwells, the occasional closet, Murray dropped out of school to live on the streets, beyond the reach of welfare workers and institutional confinement.

She would spend daytime hours reading relentlessly in the public library, night time in an endless succession of uncertain environments. Hustling for money anywhere she could find it, she was always poised at the edge of the same abyss both parents had fallen into. But maybe because she was so painfully familiar with the addiction that trapped them, she never became addicted herself.

Instead, a hard knot of determination, chance encounters with positive influences, the unexpected admittance to a nontraditional high school where she crammed four years of secondary education into two, all propelled her toward a future almost impossible to imagine.

Winning a New York Times scholarship to cover the cost of her college education, and defying the odds to win admittance to the most exclusive university in the country set the stage for a life lightyears away from her childhood and adolescence.

Her memoir became a New York Times best seller within a week of publication and went on to become an international bestseller in 12 countries and eight languages. She has appeared as an inspirational speaker across the world, appearing at events alongside such luminaries as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Mikhail Gorbachev and the Dalai Lama.

Her Sonoma appearance, in conversation with Sonoma Valley Sun editor David Bolling, will be at the Hanna Center auditorium at 7 p.m. March 23. More information and tickets for the event are available through sonomaspeakerseries.com