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By Katrina Margolis
Hometown Weekly Reporter
Tara Sullivan believed that when she grew up, she would follow in her parents’ footsteps to become an aid worker.
As Sullivan likes to mention, though, “plan A” does not always work in.
In fact, “plan A” very rarely works out.
Instead, Sullivan works as a writer. So far, she has published two books, “Golden Boy” and “The Bitter Side of Sweet,” books that have emerged from Sullivan’s desire to help and to aid. On Monday, April 10, Sullivan spoke to students at Needham High School, thanks to the support of the Needham Education Foundation. Sullivan answered questions about her international interests, her writing process, and the state of the cocoa industry.
Sullivan grew up all over the world, eventually landing in the United States just before high school. “After college, I did refugee resettlement - I tried, I really wanted this to be ‘plan A,’” she said. “So what am I going to do? How am I going to put these different areas of my life together?” she pondered. The conclusion was writing. Her books focus on issues that are rarely spoken about - or perhaps not spoken about at all in the Western world - but issues that are effecting people negatively in other parts of the world. Those issues include the treatment of albino people in central Africa and the prevalence of child labor in the Ivory Coast cocoa industry. “When I found out these sorts of things were going on, I kind on the research road. The only thing that I could find was one report and just a few things in the Western media. And it really got me upset, and I was like, there should be a book about this. So in a moment of hubris I was like, ‘I will write a book about this!’”
Due to the nature of her work, Sullivan begins her writing with the setting. “Pretty much every author I know starts with character and then figures things out from there. Disturbingly, the only other author I know that starts with setting writes horror,” Sullivan said, laughing. The topics of her works are so location-specific that she says they absolutely could not be set anywhere else.
With her humorous banter and unique ability to make issues thousands of miles away directly relatable, Sullivan was both entertaining and informative.
After finishing her talk, one teacher asked her whether she was in favor of or against the Oxford comma. “I always use the Oxford comma,” she answered.
No wonder she garnered such a loud round of applause.
