About Jillian Sullivan
I was born in Masterton in 1957 and have five children and four grand-daughters, who continue to be an inspiration to my writing. I now live on a small farm near Motueka with my partner, our teenage daughter and three Anglo Arab horses.
For the last few years I studied fulltime to complete my English degree and now teach creative writing part-time at Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology. Before that I studied music performance and was a drummer in a woman’s rock band, Red Dress.
Winning the Highlights Fiction Award in America gave me the opportunity to travel to Russia and England, staying with writers and publishers for children, and a scholarship took me to New York State to study children’s writing.
I began my working life as a cub reporter on the Hawera Star and went on to become a lab technician, vet nurse, apple picker, elderly care-giver, cleaner, musician, tutor – any job that could fit round bringing up children, writing and studying.
Jillian’s advice to young writers “First, just do it! When I was a young mother and writing my first novel, I only had one afternoon a fortnight by myself, so I’d lock the door and take the phone off the hook. It took four years to write that book and another six books over twenty years before I got my first novel published (Shreve’s Promise). I didn’t know how to write a book when I started so I learnt by doing it and reading good books other people had written. The next biggest thing I’d say is, never give up. Keep writing and keep learning and believe in yourself .”
For the last few years I studied fulltime to complete my English degree and now teach creative writing part-time at Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology. Before that I studied music performance and was a drummer in a woman’s rock band, Red Dress.
Winning the Highlights Fiction Award in America gave me the opportunity to travel to Russia and England, staying with writers and publishers for children, and a scholarship took me to New York State to study children’s writing.
I began my working life as a cub reporter on the Hawera Star and went on to become a lab technician, vet nurse, apple picker, elderly care-giver, cleaner, musician, tutor – any job that could fit round bringing up children, writing and studying.
Jillian’s advice to young writers “First, just do it! When I was a young mother and writing my first novel, I only had one afternoon a fortnight by myself, so I’d lock the door and take the phone off the hook. It took four years to write that book and another six books over twenty years before I got my first novel published (Shreve’s Promise). I didn’t know how to write a book when I started so I learnt by doing it and reading good books other people had written. The next biggest thing I’d say is, never give up. Keep writing and keep learning and believe in yourself .”