On September 23, 1980, Liz Murray was born with drugs in her system but no birth defects. Her mother hadn't been careful during her pregnancy but she was lucky. Murray's parents were hippies, leading a bohemian lifestyle in Greenwich Village, New York, in the 1970s and dealing with the aftermath of the party in the 1980s.
Growing up in a small, filthy apartment in the Bronx, watching her parents mainline cocaine was a normal part of life for Murray. Her mother was a blind schizophrenic who herself spent time living on the streets after running away from an abusive home; her father was a middle-class Irish Catholic who dropped out of university to deal drugs.
Murray's life continued down the path her parents chose for her until her late teens when she decided to turn her life around. Now she has brought her U.S. bestselling memoir of how she went from being homeless to Harvard to the U.K.
"My relationship with my parents was always complicated but it was always clear that they loved me," says Murray. "Later on that mattered a lot when I was in situations where I had nowhere to stay and I felt alone."
Murray found herself homeless at 15 after her mother died of AIDS and her father, also suffering from the disease, was taken into a shelter. The teenager would sleep in the subway, in hallways of buildings and in friends' parents homes.
During her first stint of homelessness, she relied on her boyfriend Carlos, who promised her a better life once he received his inheritance at 18. The money arrived but Carlos found other uses for it. When he too became addicted to drugs, Murray, who was never tempted, fled.
"My mum's drug use was so graphic in front of me and she was constantly saying 'Please, Lizzie, don't do this' -- that really stuck in my mind," Murray recalls. "Being able to see that and then becoming a teenager later on and people discovering drugs, I understood immediately that that was the beginning of a process that nobody wants to be a part of."
Murray had barely started school when she dropped out. The name calling and teasing about her appearance from her fellow students proved too much for her but, despite her lack of formal education, she taught herself to read, poring for days over literature beyond her years through library books unreturned by her father.
"There was just something about reading that gave me an escape. Later on in life that translated to my writing," says Murray, whose memoir offers a rare and comprehensive firsthand account of being homeless in America.
After years of relying on other people but being let down, Murray decided that the only way to get out of her situation was to help herself. Persuading her father to attend the meeting and using a friend's address, Murray convinced teachers at Humanities Preparatory Academy -- a school that would provide the necessary extra support she needed -- that she had a semi-stable home life.
Murray completed four years of high school in just two, studying through the night wherever she could find shelter. Carrying all her worldly belongings as well as her school work with her wherever she went, she gained straight As.
"If I found myself getting caught up in my past I just try to tell myself it's not happening now," says Murray, describing how she achieved what she did. "I don't have to even consider what happened before to consider what's happening now. Being weighed down in your past I think is partly to do with the fact that we need healing, but after a while I just got sick of sitting in it. I thought to myself that if I don't do something to change the situation then I'm going to stay stuck."
When the time came to apply for college, Murray aimed for the best. On a field trip to Harvard she asked herself "Why not me?" but having never seen more than a couple of hundred dollars, she was astonished by the expense of attending a university like Harvard. She came across the New York Times College Scholarship, which required applicants to write about obstacles they had overcome to thrive academically. She knew it was time to reveal her homelessness.
Her story gained her not only the scholarship but the kindness and generosity she had seen so little of in her life. Realizing the power of her story and how it changed her life, she had to share it with more people.
"I think the power of story telling is about really holding up a possibility for a person," says Murray, who completed her psychology degree and now runs motivational workshops and talks. "I knew that when I was living through this experience, I had to share it because it was demonstrating what's possible for people."
Murray made it to Harvard but is keen that people don't think that is all her story is about -- how a girl from the New York streets coped by fitting in with the academic elite.
"I used to hold myself as if I was very separate and I no longer really feel that way," explains Murray. "We may look different from each other or we may grow up in different atmospheres but we're really all just one of the same thing ... That doesn't mean I didn't laugh, and find it funny to go into people's homes and see little quirks. I honestly felt like I was visiting a foreign country. I never completely lose that feeling, like I'm practicing another culture when I'm around people from any means."
With her successful career, there is no need for Murray to live in any kind of poverty today, but the 30-year-old says she has a very simple, down-to-earth life, surrounded by people she loves in her home in Manhattan.
Still in touch with workers at the Door, the non-profit organization that provided invaluable support for her when homeless, she is now a trustee for its pioneering new project, the Broome Street Academy -- the first school in the U.S. for the homeless, which opened its doors in September 2010.
"I'm excited to be on the other side of it because I feel like I understand maybe more than the average person and I want to put that to use. I hate the idea that I would have gone through that for nothing."
Murray believes that no situation is hopeless and that many people's reactions to homelessness are the result of misunderstandings.
"I have been there where it felt like no one in the world cared. I'd see people walking past me and they were cynical, I'd ask for help and they wouldn't give it -- maybe they thought I was on drugs or something. But I came to a point in my life where I realized that it's not that people don't care or that people are callous but they don't know how to help. They just need to realize how much their caring really does matter.
"I just want people who live on the street and who are struggling to know that while their past matters and it affects things, it doesn't control what you're doing right now. I think it's victorious for people to take those bold moments of courage where they'll knock on a non-profit's door, where they'll get sober, maybe one day sign a lease on an apartment, get a set of keys. I'm not talking about some big school somebody needs to go to -- these are the victories in life, just to be true to yourself and to have those tiny little successes."