MGH doctor featured speaker at May 6 event at Hingham library

The Hingham Public Library will host an “Evening With the Author,” featuring Harvard Medical School Dr. Suzanne Koven in conversation with Gish Jen, who will discuss Koven’s new book, “Letter to a Young Female Physician.” The program will be held virtually on Thursday, May 6, at 7 p.m., on Zoom. Those who wish to attend can register at www.hinghamlibrary.org/Koven. 

Koven is a primary care physician and the inaugural writer-in-residence at Massachusetts General Hospital. 

In 2016, during an orientation at Massachusetts General Hospital, she watched interns write letters to their future selves, disclosing their hopes and fears about their burgeoning careers. She found herself recalling her own internship, 30 years earlier, which did not include anything as helpful as an orientation. She turned her thoughts into an essay for the New England Journal of Medicine, and it spoke of the numerous challenges faced by female physicians throughout their careers. She was stunned to find out that thousands of readers shared her very same feelings and experiences, and the response to that essay moved her to expand it into her first book. 

A poignant and funny exploration of authenticity in work and life, “Letter to a Young Female Physician” is by turns humorous and profound, from a doctor, mother, wife, daughter, teacher, and writer who sheds light on the desire to find meaning and on a way to be one’s own imperfect self in the world.

Gish Jen is an award-winning author whose short work has been widely published. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been awarded a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction and a Guggenheim fellowship. Her latest novel, “The Resisters,” is her eighth book.