West Virginia Women Writers: Patricia Harman

State Library Services
1900 Kanawha Blvd. E.
Culture Center, Building 9
Charleston, WV 25305

Phone: (304) 558-2045
Email: wvlcref@wv.gov

Patricia Harman has spent over thirty years caring for women as a midwife, first as a lay-midwife, delivering babies in cabins and on communal farms in West Virginia, and later as a nurse-midwife in teaching hospitals and in a community hospital birthing center.

For the past twenty years, Ms. Harman has been a nurse-midwife on the faculty of The Ohio State University, Case Western Reserve University and most recently West Virginia University. In 1998 she went into private practice with her husband, Tom, an OB/Gyn, in Morgantown, West Virginia. Here they devoted their lives to caring for women and bringing babies into the world in a gentle way.

Harman has published in The Journal of Midwifery & Women's Health and The Journal of Sigma Theta Tau for Nursing Scholarship as well as alternative publications. She is a regular presenter at national midwifery conferences and her first novel, The Midwife of Hope River was awarded book of the year by the American College of Nurse Midwives in 2014.

Photo credit: Bob Kosturko

The Blue Cotton Gown: A Midwife's Memoir

Arms Open Wide: A Midwife's Journey

The Midwife of Hope River

The Reluctant Midwife

Once a Midwife

The Runaway Midwife

A Midwife's Song: Oh Freedom!

Lost on Hope Island : The Amazing Tale of the Little Goat Midwives