Madeline Sharples finally fulfilled her dream to work as a creative writer and journalist late in life. She took workshops and classes to hone her creative writing skills at: the Jack Grapes’ Method Writing Course, Esalen Institute, Poetry Salon, and the UCLA Writer’s Extension program. Her memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On: A Mother’s Memoir of Living with Her Son’s Bipolar Disorder and Surviving His Suicide, originally released in 2011 (first publisher went out of business) and rereleased by Dream of Things, in 2012. And her first novel, Papa’s Shoes: A Polish shoemaker and his family settle in small-town America – a work of historical fiction – was released in April 2019 by Aberdeen Bay publishers.
Madeline co-authored Blue-Collar Women: Trailblazing Women Take on Men-Only Jobs (New Horizon Press, 1994), co-edited the poetry anthology, The Great American Poetry Show, Volumes 1, 2 and 3, and wrote the poems for two photography books, The Emerging Goddess and Intimacy (Paul Blieden, photographer). Her poems have also appeared online and in print magazines, e.g., in the 2016 Porter Gulch Review, Yellow Chair’s In the Words of Womyn 2016 anthology, Story Circle Network’s journals and anthologies, the Best of Poetry Salon 2013-2018, and the Vine Leaves Literary Journal: a Collection of Vignettes from Across the Globe, 2017.
Her articles have appeared in the Huffington Post, Naturally Savvy, Aging Bodies, PsychAlive, Story Circle Network’s HerStories and One Woman’s Day blogs, and the Memoir Network blog. One of Madeline’s essays has also appeared in the My Gutsy Story Anthology by Sonia Marsh. She has appeared on panels at writers’ conferences and have spoken about and read her work at book clubs, book stores, libraries, churches, writing groups, and on the radio. She also posts about writing on her website Choices and host authors on her website who are marketing their books through the WOW! Women on Writing virtual book tours.
