English teacher Kevin Sharp is planning to donate half of his cash award from placing first in the 24th Annual Palo Alto Weekly Short Story Contest, he said in an interview on Nov. 24.
Sharp’s creative piece, titled Pomegranate, will be published online and in the December edition of the Palo Alto Weekly.
He decided to share his $500 prize with Smile Train, a non-profit organization that, according to its website, pays for children’s cleft lip and palate surgeries in developing countries.
“There are a lot of people out there worse off than I am,” Sharp said. “I still get the acknowledgment, but half of my award can give one kid with a cleft lip a full operation. All I had to do was write a story; I didn’t have to go through much adversity.”
Pomegranate revolves around an internal struggle within a spelling bee contender.
“It’s about a boy who’s the last person standing in a spelling bee,” Sharp explained. “The challenge he faces is what’s going on in his own mind, which tells a story about his relationship with everyone in the audience in between the words [the protagonist is given to spell].”
“I’m not going to give away the ending,” he added with a smile.
Sharp was first inspired to write this story during a weekly writers’ group session.
“I wrote a short version of this piece as part of a writers’ group and then I expanded it into a ‘real story’ later,” he said.
“I’ve been going to the writers’ group for a couple of years,” he continued. “I like it because I tend to be a lazy writer when other things distract me, but being there forces me to produce something.”
As an avid writer since childhood, Sharp has experimented in a variety of media.
“I always enjoyed writing as a child, especially creative pieces,” he said. “I did a lot of writing before I was a teacher as a screenwriter, but this is my first actual piece of published writing because scripts aren’t exactly published.”
Even as a full-time English teacher, he occasionally returns to theater as a hobby.
“When I’m inspired in my free time I still write scripts, but mostly I do things with the theater department at Paly,” he said. “I did the staged readings awhile ago and I usually participate in the Play in a Day in December.”
Sharp stressed the importance of persevering in what one loves, especially for an emerging writer.
“It really is true that you just have to write even if you don’t feel like it,” he said. “You’ll never get better if all of your ideas are stuck in your head.”