Paula Sharp is the author of the critically
acclaimed short story collection, The Imposter
(1991), and of the novels The Woman Who Was Not All
There (1988), Lost
in Jersey City (1993), Crows over a Wheatfield (1996),
and I Loved You All
(2000). All of Sharp's novels have been New York Times Book Review
Notable Books, and she has received numerous literary honors, including
the Quality Paperback Book Club New Voice Award, an NEA fellowship, the New Jersey Distinguished Author
Award, and the WLA Banta award.. Sharp is also the
translator of Chilean writer Antonio Skarmeta's novel The
Insurrection. She has taught creative writing at Bryn Mawr,
Yale and Wesleyan University, and has lectured at various universities
and law schools on literature and censorship, domestic violence
issues and criminal and family law.
The daughter of a nuclear physicist and an anthropologist,
Paula
Sharp was born in San Diego, California,
and raised in North Carolina, New Orleans and Ripon,
Wisconsin. Sharp grew up in an unconventional single-parent
family, a fact occasionally reflected in her novels. During her childhood, Sharp's mother
excavated pyramids and ruins in Mexico, and the author's sister, Lesley Sharp,
is currently a respected anthropologist who writes
on the history and culture of Madagascar. When first embarking on
her career as a writer, Sharp spent a year in the Brazilian Amazon as a
hanger-on in an anthropology project. While there, she
translated Latin American short fiction and wrote her first novel, The Woman Who Was Not
All There. From 1979 to 1986, Sharp resided in Jersey City and worked as a
criminal investigator, secretary and parochial school
teacher. After graduating from Columbia University
Law school in 1985, she served as a public defender for the Legal Aid
Society in Manhattan until 1993. She currently lives in New York State with
her husband and son and writes full
time.
