An author’s job is to make people care about the words that have been written.
Andrew F. Sullivan local Oshawa author
That was the message Oshawa author Andrew F. Sullivan brought to the city’s Cultural Summit held at the Arts Resource Centre Oct. 19.
The City of Oshawa holds the event annually to update people on the status of arts and cultural events in the community.
As part of the summit, Sullivan spoke to some city staff, along with officials from UOIT and Durham College and Oshawa residents about his book, called ‘Waste’.
“The first rule is that nobody cares, and you have to make them care, and it is up to you to make your work valuable to other people,” says Sullivan, 29, about the process of writing.
Sullivan says the book is about a broke down industrial city in 1989, in the middle of a downfall. He says it is not specifically about here, but is a “shadow” of a city like Oshawa.
“It’s not really about Oshawa, it’s like a nightmare version, a lithium, nightmare version of a city of this size in a post-industrial sort of landscape and it takes place in the 80’s,” he says.
Sullivan says writers tend to write about what they know and he knows Oshawa because he grew up here, attending Father Francis Mahoney elementary school and St. Stephen’s Secondary School in Bowmanville until he moved away to London, Ont. to attend Western University in 2005.
Sullivan started writing at a young age but later in life he says writing became more than just a hobby.
Currently, he has two other books that are written and awaiting publication and is about to start work on a third.
In addition to his written work, Sullivan works at an urban design company in Toronto.
