Rosemary Sullivan is the author of eleven books including Cuba: Grace Under Pressure with photographs by Malcolm David Batty (2003); Labyrinth of Desire: Women, Passion, and Romantic Obsession (2001) published in Canada, the U.S., England, Spain, and Latin America; and the national best seller The Red Shoes: Margaret Atwood Starting Out (1998). Her 1995 biography Shadow Maker: The Life of Gwendolyn MacEwen won the Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction, the Canadian Author’s Association Literary Award for Non-Fiction, the University of British Columbia’s Medal for Canadian Biography, the City of Toronto Book Award and was nominated for the Trillium prize. It became the basis for Brenda Longfellow’s award-winning documentary Shadow Maker (1998). Sullivan’s first biography, By Heart: Elizabeth Smart / A Life (1991) was nominated for the Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction. Her first poetry collection The Space a Name Makes (1986) won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. She has since published two other books of poetry with Black Moss Press, including The Bone Ladder: New and Selected Poems (2001). In 2001, Black Moss released Memory-Making: The Selected Essays of Rosemary Sullivan that included essays published in ex. Her latest book, Villa Air-Bel: World War II, Escape and a House in Marseille won the Canadian Jewish Book Awards Yad Vashem Prize in Holocaust History / Scholarship.
Her journalistic pieces have won her a silver National Magazine Award and a Western Journalism Award first prize for travelogue. Sullivan is also the editor of eight anthologies, including Stories by Canadian Women and Short Fiction for Oxford University Press. She has lectured across Canada and in the US, England, France, Italy, Germany, Sweden. Belgium, Spain, India, Puerto Rico, Chile, and Mexico.
Sullivan is the recipient of Guggenheim, Killam, Camargo, and Jackman Humanities Institute fellowships. She teaches at the University of Toronto where she holds a Canada Research Chair in Biography and Creative Non-Fiction and is director of the MA Program in English in the Field of Creative Writing. She is currently a Senior Fellow with the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. She was awarded the Lorne Pierce Medal (2008) by the Royal Society of Canada for distinguished contributions to Canadian literature and culture.
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