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TO EDITORS: IF YOU USE THIS ARTICLE, PLEASE CONSIDER RUNNING IT UNDER THE FOLLOWING BYLINE. THE WRITER IS A JOURNALISM STUDENT AT HOUSATONIC COMMUNITY COLLEGE. NO COMPENSATION IS EXPECTED.

NOTED WRITER TALKS SHOP AT HCC

BY CYNTHIA LOYND

BRIDGEPORT—Becoming a writer far from easy.

But award-winning author Matthew Sharpe would do it again.

“Writing can be difficult and the rewards don’t always come in the package of financial reward,” says Sharpe. “Writing has been in my life to help me figure out who I am, to form my own identity.”

 Sharpe appeared before an audience at Housatonic Community College Thursday evening to read excerpts from his NBC Today Show Book Club selection “The Sleeping Father” (Soft Skull Press 2003). Detailing the creative process and writing techniques he used in his novel, Sharpe focused on the power of literature to help us understand ourselves.

“The Sleeping Father” is a story about a depressed man who has divorced, failed in his career and, due to an accidental combination of two classes of antidepressants, loses his consciousness. He emerges from a coma brain-damaged and in the care of his teenage children.

Sharpe, who says he has struggled with depression, drew on his own experience to research and write about the use of psychoanalytic drugs. The high number of users he says, 120 million as indicated in a New York Times report, was worth writing about.

Sharpe sets his story in Bellwether, Conn., a town similar to New Canaan, where he grew up. Here the Schwartz family, Bernie, Chris and Cathy, deal with controversies of family, love, medical treatment, religion and race.

“A good book for me,” says Sharpe, “is one that is beautifully written and adequately addresses the complexities of the human heart and the intensity of life.” Sharpe shapes his characters by giving them obstacles to overcome, saying “something bad needs to happen to someone. That’s the engine that keeps the story going.”

Creative writing has been a part of Sharpe’s life since his first short story at the age of 10, a tale about a bulldog construction worker and his poodle girlfriend. Sharpe spent years as a fledgling writer before getting his Master in Fine Arts in Fiction degree from Columbia University and he has spent 12 years teaching high school and seven teaching college.

Sharpe is the author of “Nothing is Terrible” (2000) and “Stories from the Tube” (1998). His stories have appeared in Harper’s, American Letters & Commentary and Teachers & Writers Magazine.

He has taught at Columbia, Bard College and New College of Florida. At present he is an Assistant Professor of English at Wesleyan University in Middletown and a writer in residence at the Bronx Academy of Letters, a writing-themed public high school.

Though Sharpe was a widely published short story writer, his novel was first rejected by more than 20 publishers. However, “The Sleeping Father” has sold over 30,000 copies since its release in October 2003.

The story was selected by the Today Show Book Club and Sharpe made an appearance on the Today Show.

His novel has been acclaimed in reviews by the New York Times and Publishers Weekly and is being considered by Warner Brothers for a movie. It won the 2004 Independent Publishers Award for fiction.

Along with readings from “The Sleeping Father”, Sharpe focused his talk at HCC on creative writing. “I think if you happen to be someone for whom literature and story telling and poetry are going to be an important part of your life, studying writing gives you a deeper appreciation of what it means to be involved in literature.”

Sharpe advises writers to write about the world they know, or to imagine the world from someone else’s point of view. He encourages using the variety of options in writing and experimenting with techniques such as realism and symbolism.

Sharpe says he develops characters into complicated human beings by digging into who else they are besides who they outwardly appear to be. “You have to shake the story up by giving a character his greatest fear,” he said

Sharpe lists as some of his own inspirational authors Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse 5) and Joseph Heller (Catch 22). These are authors who deal with a world at large but focus on it more intimately by getting inside of someone’s head.

Sharpe also values an author’s sense of absurdity and comic treatment of a sensitive subject. He likes to see everyday situations turn into “really weird stuff.”

He likes to read authors who experiment with a variety of forms, as he feels creative writing and reading are parts of the same activity. “Reading allows us the great pleasure of fantasy and is great consolation for bad things that happen.”

Lois McCracken of Milford was fascinated and confounded by Sharpe’s character Chris Schwartz. Sharpe says Chris is his revenge, the release of all his obnoxious thoughts 25 years later.

Herb Gullberg of Bridgeport and a student at HCC was thrilled to get writing tips from Sharpe. “All I ever wanted to do was write,” says Gullberg. Sharpe encouraged him to continue writing about East Bridgeport and to visit other public places to listen to what people are saying.

Gullberg found Sharpe’s comments about the writer’s workday appealing.

“You get up,” Sharpe said, “have a strong cup of coffee, put on your sweat pants … and make things up.”

Cynthia Loynd of Stratford is a journalism student at Housatonic Community College.