Way back in the late '90s, Katherine Sharpe, then a freshman at Reed, did something that was becoming typical of her generation: she started taking an antidepressant. That experience bred questions—Why are these drugs suddenly everywhere? Do we need them? Do they make us more like ourselves, or less—and if we start young enough, how would we even know? Incubated over the years, those questions eventually formed the backbone of a book, Coming of Age on Zoloft (Harper Perennial, 2012), a memoir-investigation that unpacks what it means to grow up on antidepressants and other psychotropic drugs (and contains a few Reed scenes).

Before authoring a book, Katherine worked for a number of years in the magazine and digital publishing industries in New York. She's managed a science magazine's stable of ornery bloggers, overseen two publications' major website redesigns and launches, done a reasonable amount of freelance pitching and writing, and flirted with a career in academia, to the tune of a master's degree in English. She is back in Portland briefly to read from her book at Powell's Burnside, and she is looking forward to visiting Reed for an informal conversation/Q&A at Career Services, where she'll gladly leverage any or all of this experience to talk about what's of interest to the group. If you've wondered what writing (and selling) a book is like, if you've thought about working in publishing (and wondered about the different things that could mean), if you've fantasized about the life of a freelance writer, if you're an English-y person and have debated between staying in school versus going out in the 'real world,' this could be the event for you.