Karen Bloom Gevirtz spent nearly three decades as a professor of English at American universities before becoming an independent scholar. She also taught in Women's and Gender Studies programs, as well as the Medical Humanities program at Seton Hall University, where she developed courses connecting the sciences and humanities. Gevirtz earned a BA in English at Brown University while also taking pre-med courses and working as a research assistant in a neurochemistry lab. She has a PhD in British Literature from Emory University, where her dissertation was a finalist for the Lore Metzger Prize. Internationally recognized for her scholarship on women and writing in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, she has received research fellowships and grants from organizations including the Folger Shakespeare Library, Chawton House Library, and the Institute for Advanced Studies at Loughborough University. Gevirtz has authored academic articles, chapters and three scholarly books, and co-edited a collection of essays. The Apothecary's Wife: The Hidden History of Medicine and How It Became a Commodity is her first book for a non-academic audience. She lives in New Jersey, USA.