Jewels

A California native, Sharon McPeters attended California public schools before entering Ventura Community College . With the help and guidance of her early-career mentor, Dr. Victoria Bortolussi, she was accepted at the private University of Southern California. She earned a double degree in English and journalism there. She won USC's writing prize twice, once for a short story and once for a novella. The contest was judged by Professor Geofrey Green, Professor Extraordinaire, now at San Francisco State University. After graduation, she moved East to study in the Samul Beckett-infused writing program at SUNY Buffalo. Her master's thesis was a book of interrelated short stories titled The Bluebird Cafe. Working at the Ph.D. level in English literature, her major author was Thomas Hardy, author of Return of the Native and many other works. Her other major influences are James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Samuel Beckett, Nathalie Sarraute, Italo Calvino, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Alain Robbe-Grillet. She has published poetry and prose in several literary journals including Writ (USC) Black Mountain Review II, Escarpments and Buff. She published 5 short stories in Buffalo Spree, an upscale commercial magazine. She will always remember the simple four-word question that the keeper of the Huck Finn Chair and maverick literary critic Leslie A. Fiedler asked her--What are you writing?