John Jeremiah Sullivan (born 1974) is an American writer, musician, teacher, and editor. He is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, a contributing editor of Harper's Magazine, and the southern editor of The Paris Review. In 2014, he edited TheBest American Essays, a collection in which his work has been featured in previous years. He has also served on the faculty of Columbia University, Sewanee: The University of the South, and other institutions.
John Jeremiah Sullivan, in Havana, Cuba. Photo by his daughter Maria.
His first book, Blood Horses: Notes of a Sportswriter's Son, was published in 2004. It is part personal reminiscence, part elegy for his father, and part investigation into the history and culture of the thoroughbred racehorse.[1]
His second book, Pulphead: Essays (2011),[2] is an anthology of fourteen previously published magazine articles, with most of them "in substantially different form"[3] for the book.
Sullivan's essay "Mister Lytle: An Essay," originally published in The Paris Review, won a number of awards, including a National Magazine Award, and was anthologized in Pulphead.[4] Sullivan recounts how he lived with Andrew Nelson Lytle, when Lytle was in his 90s, helping him with house chores and learning some wisdom about writing and life.
His original music appears on the self-titled album Life of Saturdays.
In 2017, he helped lead a small group of 8th-grade students on a scavenger hunt to resurrect lost copies of The Daily Record, the African–American newspaper at the center of a white supremacist coup d'état and massacre that occurred in his adopted home town of Wilmington, NC, in 1898.[5] He and his team located seven total copies, all of which are digitized and available for view via the N.C. Digital Heritage Project.
In 2019, the New Yorker published Sullivan's novella, "Mother Nut," on its website.[6][7]
Sullivan is married to Dr. Mariana Johnson, a film scholar and professor.[8] They have two daughters.
John Jeremiah Sullivan at 6 years old in Lexington, Kentucky
