Tharpe’s first book combines her seasoned experience as a writer, unleashing her imagination and her love of and familiarity with Bible stories that she first heard as a child. She began writing po...ver maisTharpe’s first book combines her seasoned experience as a writer, unleashing her imagination and her love of and familiarity with Bible stories that she first heard as a child. She began writing poems and stories in the second grade, and she soon found that keeping journals and writing to pen pals were good writing practices. In 1973 when she graduated from Oak Ridge High School in Tennessee, she won second place in a national short story writing contest and was published for the first time. While in college at Gardner Webb University in North Carolina, her poetry was published in a variety of magazines and journals. In 1979 she graduated from the former Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and later earned a DMin degree in 1991 from the Presbyterian Seminary. She has a private practice as a licensed marriage and family therapist and is currently residing in Louisville with sweet Maggie “Mayhem” Mae.ver menos