John Jeremiah Sullivan (born 1974) is an American writer, editor and teacher based in Wilmington, North Carolina. 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 that year's The Best 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. He is the co-founder of the non-profit research initiative Third Person Project.
Early life and education
Sullivan was born in Louisville, Kentucky to Mike Sullivan, a sportswriter. His mother is an English professor. He earned his degree in 1997 from The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee.
Career Sullivan's 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.
His second book, Pulphead (2011),"Pulp Fever", Daniel Riley, GQ, November 3, 2011. is an anthology of fourteen previously published magazine articles, with most of them "in substantially different form"Pulphead, Copyright page, front matter. for the book.
Sullivan's essay "Mister Lytle", originally published in The Paris Review, won a number of awards, including a National Magazine Award, and was anthologized in Pulphead. 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. 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.
After being featured multiple times in the past and even editing an installment of The Best American Essays in 2014, Sullivan's essay "Corona" was featured in the 2025 essay collection edited by Jia Tolentino.
Sullivan is married to Dr. Mariana Johnson, a film scholar and professor. They have two daughters.
Reception In a 2025 interview American journalist Wright Thompson stated that his favorite piece of journalistic writing is Sullivan's "The Final Comeback of Axl Rose" (2006).
Bibliography
Books
Pulphead: Essays, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011.
Essays and reporting GQ "Upon This Rock", on a visit to a Christian rock festival, 2004. "Good-Bye to All That", on a visit to the Gulf Coast, post-Hurricane Katrina, 2005. "The Final Comeback of Axl Rose", on Axl Rose, 2006. "Back in the Day", on Michael Jackson, 2009. "He Shall Be Levi", on a visit to Alaska, to meet Levi Johnston, 2009. "American Grotesque". on the Tea Party movement, 2010. "Violence of the Lambs". on the coming war between animals and humans, 2011. "Too Much Information", on David Foster Wallace, 2011. "The Last Wailer", on Bunny Wailer, 2011. "Peyton's Place". on living in the house used for the filming of One Tree Hill, 2011. "Rick Owens, Fashion's Lord of Darkness, is Still Out There" on Rick Owens, 2018. "Are I Peep?". on the death of Lil Peep, 2018. "Diddy Opens Up About Biggie's Death and the Secret Project He's Working on with Jay-Z". on Sean Combs, 2018.
The New Yorker "The Ill-Defined Plot," on the history of the essay, 2014. "David Foster Wallace's Perfect Game," 2014 Online version is titled "Rhiannon Giddens and what folk music means". "Mother Nut," a novella, 2019.
Harper's Magazine "Horseman, Pass By: Glory, grief, and the race for the Triple Crown", 2003. "A Rawness of Seeing: Denis Johnson writes the big novel", 2007. "Unknown Bards: The blues becomes transparent about itself", included in Best Music Writing, 2009. "Man Called Fran", 2023. "Twain Dreams", on Mark Twain and Percival Everett's James, 2025.
New York Magazine "Art-Shaped Box", on Nirvana, 2004. "Dear Heather", on Leonard Cohen, 2004. "My Front Pages", on Bob Dylan, 2004.
The New York Times Magazine "You Blow My Mind. Hey, Mickey!", on Disney World, 2011. "How William Faulkner Tackled Race — and Freed the South From Itself" on William Faulkner, 2012. "Venus and Serena Against the World" on Venus Williams and Serena Williams, 2012. "Where is Cuba Going?", on Cuba's future, included in The Best American Travel Writing, 2013. "My Debt to Ireland" on Ireland's Future, 2012, included in The Best American Essays, 2013 "The Ballad of Geeshie and Elvie", about blues singers Geeshie Wiley and Elvie Thomas, 2014. "‘Shuffle Along’ and the Lost History of Black Performance in America,” 2016. “How Prince Got His Name”, 2016.
The Paris Review “Guy Davenport, The Art of Fiction No. 174”, interview, 2002 "Mister Lytle", an essay, 2010. "Unnamed Caves", on American cave art, 2011. “The Princes: A Reconstruction”, 2012 Annette Gordon-Reed, The Art of Nonfiction No. 11, 2021 "Uhtceare" (Sleep Stories), 2021
The Oxford American “That Don’t Get Him Back Again”, 2010 “That Chop on the Upbeat”, 2013 “Baby Boy Born Birthplace Blues”, 2016 "Death Rattle", 2017
The Yale Review "Guest House", 2022 The Sewanee Review "Corona", 2024
Sullivan has also written an introduction to a new edition of The Great Shark Hunt, an essay collection by Hunter S. Thompson.
Awards 2003 Eclipse Award, Blood Horses 2003 National Magazine Award, Feature Writing 2004 Whiting Award, Nonfiction 2011 National Magazine Award, Essays and Criticism, "Mister Lytle. An Essay" (The Paris Review) 2011 Pushcart Prize, Pushcart XXXV, "Mister Lytle. An Essay" (The Paris Review) 2014 James Beard Foundation's MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award, for "I placed a Jar in Tennessee," published in Lucky Peach. 2015 ASCAP Foundation Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award 2015 Windham–Campbell Literature Prize (Non-Fiction) valued at $150,000 2016 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, to complete The Prime Minister of Paradise 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship
References
External links Profile at The Whiting Foundation