Rosemary Sullivan

Sullivan was born in the small town of Valois on Lac Saint-Louis, just outside Montreal, Quebec. After graduating from St. Thomas High School, she attended McGill University on a scholarship, and received her bachelor's degree in 1968. After she was married, in 1968, she attended the University of Connecticut, where she received her MA in 1969. She then attended the University of Sussex, receiving a PhD for her thesis The Garden Master: The Poetry of Theodore Roethke in 1972 (it was published as a book in 1975).

After she completed her PhD, Sullivan moved to France to teach at the University of Dijon, and later at the University of Bordeaux. Two years later she was hired at the University of Victoria, and then in 1977 at the University of Toronto, where she taught until her retirement. In 1978, she decided to dedicate herself to her writing, while still teaching. She is now a Professor Emerita.

Sullivan's first collection of poems, The Space a Name Makes, was awarded the Gerald Lampert Award for the best first book of poetry published in Canada in 1968.[2] In 1987 Sullivan began writing a biography of Elizabeth Smart, By Heart, which was published in 1991 by Penguin Books. Sullivan realized that she had a passion for biographies. Her Shadow Maker: The Life of Gwendolyn MacEwen, which was published in 1995,' won numerous awards, including the Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction, the Canadian Authors’ Association Award for Non-fiction, the President’s Medal for Biography, University of British Columbia, and the City of Toronto Book Award.[2] Another of her biographies, The Red Shoes: Margaret Atwood Starting Out, was published in 1998.

Aside from her writing career, Sullivan has worked with Amnesty International since 1979, and in 1980 she founded a congress to aid its activities.[3] She has travelled all over the world, including Russia, Czechoslovakia, Cuba, Chile, and Nicaragua.[3]

Sullivan was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2012.[4] In 2008, she received the Lorne Pierce Medal. In 2015, she won the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction for Stalin's Daughter, her biography of Svetlana Alliluyeva.[5]

• Canadian poetry

• Author's website - rosemarysullivan.com
• HarperCollins Canada website
• Interview about Villa Air-Bel, online at CBC Words at Large (audio)