The Shepherd University Common Reading Program and Shepherd University Foundation will sponsor a lecture by Harriet A. Washington, award-winning medical journalist and author, at the Erma Ora Byrd auditorium at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 27. Washington will present a lecture featuring Shepherd’s Common Reading selection “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot and her own book on social history of medical research mentioned in Skloot’s book, “Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present.” There will be a post-lecture question and answer, as well a book signing. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Washington has been a research fellow in ethics at Harvard Medical School. She has worked as a page one editor for USA Today and a science editor for metropolitan dailies and several national magazines. Washington’s work has appeared in Health, Emerge, Psychology Today, Harvard Public Health Review, Harvard AIDS Review, Nature, Journal of the American Medical Association, American Journal of Public Health and New England Journal of Medicine. Her awards include the Congressional Black Caucus Beacon of Light Award, two awards from the National Association of Black Journalists and a Unity Award from Emerge. Washington is the founding editor of the Harvard Journal of Minority Public Health and has presented her work at universities in the U.S. and abroad. She has taught at venues that include the New School University, SUNY, Rochester Institute of Technology, University of Rochester, Harvard School of Public Health and Tuskegee University. Washington has also worked as a laboratory technician, a medical social worker, manager of a poison-control center/suicide hotline and has performed as an oboist and classical music announcer for WXXI-FM, a PBS affiliate in Rochester, N.Y.