Leslie Morgan Steiner seemed to have it all: a Harvard diploma, a glamorous job and a handsome husband. But she was hiding a secret. Her husband beat her regularly and nearly killed her.

On Thursday, Feb. 23, Steiner will share her story of surviving domestic violence at Stetson University. The event, at 7 p.m., is open to the public and will be held in the Rinker Field House inside the Hollis Center, 602 N. Bert Fish Drive, DeLand.

The Domestic Violence Awareness program is sponsored by Stetson’s Psi Chi honor society for psychology, the Alpha Chi Omega sorority, the Gender Studies program and the Department of Housing and Residential Life. Admission is free, but donations will be accepted to benefit The House Next Door, a DeLand-based non-profit organization specializing in family-based programs and individual and group counseling.

Today, Steiner is a successful writer, blogger and editor who lives in Washington, D.C., with her family and travels the nation sharing her story. Her memoir about surviving domestic violence, Crazy Love, is a New York Times bestseller, People Pick, and Book of the Week for The Week magazine.

She is the editor of the critically-acclaimed anthology Mommy Wars: Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families (Random House 2006) a frank, surprising, and refreshing look at American motherhood from 26 different perspectives. From 2006-2008 she wrote more than 500 columns for the Washington Post’s popular daily online work/​family column, “On Balance.”

She currently writes the weekly column, “Two Cents on Modern Motherhood,” for Modern Mom and Mommy Track’d: Managing the Chaos of Modern Motherhood.

In addition to years as a nonfiction magazine writer and editor, Steiner has an MBA degree in marketing from the Wharton School of Business. She launched Splenda Brand Sweetener throughout Australia, the Mid-East and Latin America for Johnson & Johnson, the world’s largest consumer healthcare company. She returned to her hometown of Washington, D.C., in 2001 to become general manager of the Washington Post Magazine, a position she held for five years.

Over the years, she has turned her professional experience into advocacy for abused women as a spokeswoman at The Harriet Tubman Center inMinneapolis.

More information about Steiner can be found at: www.lesliemorgansteiner.com

For more information about the Feb. 23 event at Stetson, contact ChelseaLeNoble at[email protected] or Shannon Martin at [email protected].