Biography

Born October 21, 1960, Olive L. Sullivan grew up in the small Midwestern town of Pittsburg, Kansas, the daughter of a college professor and a mother passionately interested in the creative process. Inevitably, the environment thus engendered was an eccentric one, where ideas were encouraged, no matter how unrealistic, and brainstorming was the family hobby.

From her earliest memories, Olive has been a writer and storyteller. When she was very small, she would tell stories to be illustrated by her mother, and she and her brother, film producer Mark K. Sullivan, made short animated movies which Olive illustrated and Mark directed. In high school, Olive's parents built an airplane in the family living room, which left her a lot of time to pursue her own interests as an amateur naturalist and writer. It was at about this time that a teacher, Elaine Bryant, encouraged her to focus on writing as a career. In college, Olive worked for the Pittsburg State University yearbook and student newspaper, both award-winning publications. The magazine-style Kanza yearbook, during her tenure as managing editor, won its first ever Pacemaker Award, the most prestigious in collegiate journalism at that time. Following graduation, Olive headed to Colorado, where she married and spent several years trying to combine study for a master's degree with freelance writing and child-raising. She read Shakespearean criticism to the baby and wrote poetry at night when everyone had gone to bed. Single again, Sullivan began teaching college writing classes and, after a stint in New Mexico, returned to Kansas. She produced a television morning show, then spent eight years as a newspaper reporter, even creating and editing a Spanish-language monthly for two years before turning to a full-time freelance career which has included ghost-writing, writing award-winning play and film scripts, publishing poetry and non-fiction articles and copy-editing everything from fiction to a mathematics dissertation.

Her breakthrough occurred as she was sitting at her newspaper desk one day despairing over the corporatization of the small town community paper. The phone rang and a local multi-millionaire asked her to write a book for him and said there were more projects to come after that one. She promptly quit her job, set up a home office, and has yet to look back. The next breakthrough occurred after she met a producer from Los Angeles at a film festival where her first movie, "Cleveland in My Dreams" was awarded Best Comedy. One day, sitting at her desk at home despairing of ever getting the dog hair off the sofa, the phone rang and the producer asked her to consider working on the script for a feature now in development. Stay tuned... Olive's writing career is enhanced by the assistance of her dog, Romeo, who keeps her feet warm while she works in her study, her son Jacob, who gives her marketing advice, and her son Frank, who gives critiques and runs errands and knows what "Leave me alone, I'm on deadline," means. Olive is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, the Missouri Writers Guild, the Kansas City Writers, the Joplin Writers Guild, and the First Street Writers. She is a former member of the Kansas Press Association and the National Endowment for the Humanities Humanities Inclusion Project. In addition to writing, Olive is an illustrator and artist, a member of the Midwest Clay Artists, and is in the process of restoring a 100-year-old home. Olive has also traveled, studying at two different colleges in England, living in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and Newfoundland, Canada, and studying Spanish at a language institute in San Jose, Costa Rica. She wishes potential employers to know her passport is up to date, and her toothbrush is packed.
- IMDb mini biography by: Olive Sullivan

Olive is the sister of producer/director Mark K. Sullivan

Olive's first paid publications were two poems in The Little Balkans Review.