AUTHOR
SPEAKER
ADVOCATE
Dreams Are For The Dead
With gripping honesty and emotional depth, this memoir tells a story of abuse, addiction, sex work, and the long road to self-forgiveness.
Far from a polished redemption arc, this memoir is a reclamation. It is not about triumph as much as truth—about speaking what has been silenced, and naming the pain others are still living in.
“This isn’t a hero’s journey. It’s a human one,” Sharp says.
“This is for the ones still using, still surviving, still believing they’re too far gone.
I wrote it to say: you’re not.”
“When I sat down to write Dreams Are For The Dead, I wasn’t trying to follow a formula. I wasn’t chasing a tidy arc or a clean narrative. I gave myself permission to break every rule I’d ever learned about structure, genre, and voice. I didn’t want this memoir to just tell a story—I wanted it to feel like what surviving actually feels like: chaotic, nonlinear, beautiful and brutal all at once.
I let memory guide the flow and I allowed pain to exist on the page without needing it to be tied up with a bow.
This wasn’t just writing. It was rebuilding. It was therapy. It was an experiment in honesty, and in whether the truth—even the ugliest parts of it—could still be beautiful.”
"S. Elias W Sharp, author, speaker, advocate, delivers a captivating memoir in his debut book, Dreams Are for the Dead. Elias powerfully conveys his journey in unfiltered prose, giving readers rare insight into understanding what an addict experiences, and how Elias broke the bonds that had ensnared him." - John Busbee, The Culture Buzz
What’s on my Desk…
I am currently working on a political analysis that explores the machinery of scapegoating in America—how marginalized communities are turned into villains—and what it takes to reclaim a more honest, humane democracy.
