Judith Sullivan lived in Leeds in the UK for two decades until a recent move to London. While her Yorkshire-speak still has some gaping holes, she speaks French to mother-tongue standard and has adopted Gertrude Stein’s adage that America is her country but Paris is her hometown.
Judith learned French before English and lived in Paris from 1970-76 and again from 1990-97. She is from Baltimore and finished high school in Montgomery County, Maryland, before attending Yale College. In New Haven, when she wasn’t eating pizza, writing for the Yale Daily News or listening to Born to Run – at times simultaneously – she wrote her senior essay on French feminist movements from 1945 to 1981.
An unreconstructed feminist, she is writing a series of books set in Paris in the 1960s and 1970s with plots informed by the senior essay. She also writes poems and book reviews and provides opinions to anyone who asks and quite a few people who don’t ask.
She now works as an editor for an international news service and will not apologize for being a syntax and usage geek. Her journalistic career has been eclectic – she has contributed to the International New York Times, Government Executive, Soap Opera Digest, the Jacksonville (Florida) Times-Union and many computer publications. Many an administration back, Judith edited a newsletter for the Department of Veterans Affairs’ National Cemetery Service. In the nation’s capital, also reviewed Kingston Trio, Huey Lewis & The News and Madonna concerts for local publications. She also worked as a teacher and translator in Paris where she lived from 1990 to 1997.
She was married to the incomparable Clive (1944-2020), the handsome Brit who lured her to the rolling landscape of West Yorkshire. She is definitely a cat person, a decent cook, especially of curries, and will not tolerate an ill word spoken of Bruce Springsteen or his music.
This website, named to honor the late and so very great Woody Guthrie, has been set up to allow me to share thoughts, interesting and otherwise. About this bonkers world we now inhabit, about art, music and of course, books.
Enjoy!
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