Sharon draper author biography

In she was honored with the Anne V. Zarrow Award by the Tulsa Library Trust. She has been honored at the White House six times, and was chosen as one of only four authors in the country to speak at the National Book Festival Gala in Washington, D. Students in the US, Nigeria, and Ghana are reading the book and sharing ideas-a true intercontinental, cross-cultural experience.

Actively involved in encouraging and motivating all teachers and their students as well, she has worked all over the United States, as well as in Russia, Ghana, Togo, Kenya, Ethiopia, Bermuda, and Guam, spreading the word about the power of accomplished teaching and excellence in education. She is the published sharon draper author biography of numerous articles, stories, and poems.

Draper travels extensively and has been a guest on television and radio programs throughout the country, discussing issues of literature, reading, and education. She is an accomplished public speaker who addresses educational and literary groups of all ages, both nationally and internationally, with entertaining readings of her poetry and novels, as well as enlightening instructional presentations.

She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, with her husband and a golden retriever named Honey. I learned to dream through reading, learned to create dreams through writing, and learned to develop dreamers through teaching. Sharon M. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she taught high school English for twenty-five years and was named National Teacher of the Year.

Bianca Schulze: The encouragement it took for you to become a writer stemmed from a student giving you an application to a short story contest, which you went on to win. Which of the moments described above, winning the contest or receiving the letter, do you think has had the greatest impact on your writing career? Draper: Hmm. What a good question!

To be perfectly honest, both incidents became important factors in my writing career. I wrote that short story, called One Small Torch, from a gut reaction to a real incident. I was at the grocery story and I saw and heard a woman screaming at the three-year-old in her cart. The first line of the story sharons draper author biography her actual words.

I wrote it in one evening. I had no idea how good the story was, but I sent it into the contest, hoping for the best, and not really expecting anything. When I found out I had one first prize, I was thrilled. The fact that he took time out of his busy life to write me a note of acclaim and acknowledgement meant so very much to me. BS: If you could say anything to Alex Hayley right now, what would you tell him?

SD: I would tell him thank you for taking the time. Because of him I always try to take the time with new writers who are just beginning the journey. Yet I love the beach. I like to LOOK at the water, not get in it! If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you choose to be? At home. With whom in history do you most identify?

I'm not sure if identify is the right word, but I have a great deal of respect for Zora Neale Hurston whose writing is brilliant and whose path was difficult. One day, however, she received a phone call that her short story, "One Small Torch," had taken first prize. Almost overnight the astonished Draper was in the national spotlight, and she began receiving letters and calls of congratulations—some from very famous writers.

More importantly, the win ignited a spark in Draper, who decided to try her hand at a longer work of fiction. Ever the teacher, she had her students' best interest in mind. As she commented on her Web site, "I wanted to write something that young people could read that would be contemporary and exciting. Finally, at the end of a year she completed her first young adult novel, Tears of a Tiger.

Success, however, did not come overnight. The manuscript was rejected by twenty-four different publishers before it was finally accepted by Simon … Schuster. As luck would have it, while she was waiting for Tears to be published, Draper was contacted by her agent who said that another publishing house, the African American-run Just Us Books, had inquired whether Draper had anything in the works for younger readers.

The fledgling writer went back to work and churned out a mystery called Ziggy and the Black Dinosaurs. In November both of Draper's books appeared on bookstore shelves on the same day. Tigers and dinosaurs Tears of a Tiger focuses on an African American teen named Andy Jackson, who struggles to come to terms with the death of his best friend, Robert.

The two had been drinking, celebrating a high school basketball game victory, when they got into an automobile accident; Andy was driving the car. Draper uses a variety of devices to move the story along. Through journal entries, school writing assignments, and letters, readers are given insight into Andy's feelings and the reaction of his friends and family.

Sharon draper author biography

School is their world. So I make school assignments and activities vital parts of my stories. The main character in the second title in the series, Forged by Fireis Gerald Nickelby, one of Andy's basketball teammates. Darkness Before Dawn follows Andy's girlfriend, Keisha, through her senior year of high school. Ziggy and the Black Dinosaurs also ended up being a trilogy, with all three books following the adventures of ten-year-old Ziggy, who forms a club called the Black Dinosaurs with his three best friends.

Draper penned the series with African American boys in mind, drawing from the adventures of her own sons when they were children. And, just as she did in the Hazelwood High books, the teacher-turned-author mixes some "lessons" in with the adventure. In book two, Lost in the Tunnel of TimeZiggy and friends discover a tunnel once used as a station for the Underground Railroad.

The Underground Railroad was a secret network used by African slaves during the nineteenth century as they traveled from southern slave states to freedom in the North. Shadows of Caesar's Creekwhich is the third title in the series, introduces Ziggy and readers to rituals and rites of the Shawnee Indian tribe. Teachers latched on to Draper's books for making lesson plans, parents praised her for helping their children turn off the television and start turning pages, and kids raced to the library begging for more.

In fact, as one teacher told Kelly Starling of Ebony, "Few books have elicited such strong emotion in my students as Tears of a Tiger. It's the only book some of them have read completely. According to the Seattle Times, the ALA jury commended Draper "for tackling troubling contemporary issues, and providing concrete options and positive African American role models.

For example, 's Romiette and Julio takes on interracial dating and gang life, and Double Dutch, published intackles illiteracy and child abandonment. When asked why she explores such tough subjects, Draper told David Marc Fischer, "Perhaps reading about the difficulties of others will act like an armor and protect my readers from the personal tragedies of their own lives.

Gerald, the main character in Forged by Fire, lives in a violent home situation where he must protect his sister from their abusive father.