Kathleen Sharp is a fifth-generation Californian and an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation. She’s worked in a sculpture studio in Florence, as a school teacher in Lima, Peru, a meter reader in Silicon Valley, and an usher in the San Francisco Opera House. She’s backpacked, hiked, run, cycled and kayaked more miles in the West than she can count.
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Kathleen Sharp began her career covering the timber industry for a small paper on the Olympic Peninsula, while stringing for The New York Times under Wally Turner, the legendary Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter and Seattle bureau chief. After the Times acquired the Santa Barbara News Press, Sharp was hired to develop the business beat at the daily paper.
During this time, she won several awards, ranging from a fellowship to study at the Graduate School of Business, University of Washington, to six Sigma Delta Chi awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, including first place for investigative reporting and first place for feature writing.
Sharp’s first book was In Good Faith: The Inside Story of Prudential-Bache’s Multibillion-Dollar Scandal that Defrauded Thousands of Investors (St. Martin’s, 1995). Publishers Weekly called it a “shocking expose of corporate greed,” while The New York Times Book Review hailed its “sobering” take on unbridled capitalism. CBS’ 60 Minutes featured the story.
In 1995, Sharp became a correspondent for The Los Angeles Times, reporting on real estate, homelessness, and the wine industry in Central California. Her proximity to Hollywood landed her national magazine assignments to profile celebrities, directors and studio executives. In 1999, she moved to the Boston Globe, where she became its Hollywood correspondent.
She spent six years interviewing 400 sources for her next book, Mr. & Mrs. Hollywood: Edie and Lew Wasserman and Their Entertainment Empire (Carroll & Graf, 2003). The book traced the lives of two sweethearts who met in a Mob-owned joint in 1930s Cleveland, moved to a Beverly Hills talent agency and reigned over Universal Studios and the industry itself for decades. Critics loved the book. Kirkus Reviews called it “lavish and extravagant,” while Publishers Weekly applauded the “gripping portrait of the original power couple.”
Sharp’s book inspired The Last Mogul (ThinkFilm, 2005), a film documentary directed by Barry Avrich and co-produced by Sharp. A.O. Scott of The New York Timed found it “absorbing” while Variety called it “extremely classy.” As a historian of 20th century Hollywood, Sharp also consulted on Turner Classic Movies’ seven-part series Moguls & Movie Star: A History of Hollywood (2011). The Wall Street Journal praised the series as “complex and elegant…”
Throughout it all, Sharp contributed to many national magazines and organizations, including ProPublica, Vanity Fair, Smithsonian, The New York Times Magazine, Town & Country, Playboy, The Nation, Parade, and Men’s Journal among others.
Sharp was the last reporter to interview the great actress Fay Wray, which she did for Playboy. In 2006, her third book, Stalking the Beast, detailed the making of the three King Kong movies (1933, 1976 and 2005), their female stars, and respective social eras. Barnes & Noble called the book a “great primer on union history.”
Healthcare costs were exploding when Sharp received a call from a former drug salesman. His job had been to sell a “miracle” drug at high doses unapproved by the Food & Drug Administration. The drug, Procrit, energized world-class athletes such as Lance Armstrong but, in high doses, it killed patients. The rep’s quest for justice became the subject of Sharp’s fourth book, Blood Medicine: Blowing the Whistle on One of the Deadliest Prescription Drugs Ever (Dutton 2012). It was a Top Ten Pick in O Magazine, an Amazon bestseller and was hailed as the “most important non-fiction book of the past 20 years.” The Boston Globe called the book “thoroughly researched and wildly successful,” while the Saturday Evening Post praised the “David-and-Goliath story that reads like a thriller…”
Several of Sharp’s books and magazine stories have been either optioned or produced by studios such as New Regency, A&E Network, Bravo, TNT and others. Sharp appears often as an expert in shows about her journalism subjects. She’s been a guest on ABC News, C-Span, BBC, CNBC and others. She’s also reported for National Public Radio’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered, and has appeared on Leonard Lopate Show WNYC, The Jordon Rich Show of WBZ (Boston), Background Briefing on KPFK, The Peter Werbe Show on WRIF (Detroit), and many others.
She’s been a PEN Literary Journalism finalist, a member of the Author’s Table at the National Steinbeck Center, a winner of six Sigma Delta Chi awards, and a Healthcare Journalism Fellowship at the University of Southern California, among other honors. She’s also grateful for the support of The Nation Institute, Type Investigations, and The Annenberg Foundation.
Sharp lives in Santa Barbara with her family.
