Short form: Sullivan Summer is an independent scholar, critic, poet, podcaster, and adoptee rights advocate. Her creative work across genres has been published in trade, literary, and academic outlets, and her pop culture hot takes and author interviews can be heard on the Adoption Pop! podcast and Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer, a New Books Network podcast, both of which she produces. Sullivan is also the creator of Black Lit Crit, a weekly newsletter delivering the best in Black literary criticism from around the web. Her poetry chapbook, Performance Anxiety, was published in 2025 by Black Sunflowers Poetry Press, and she is a 2025 “Best of the Net” anthology nominee.

Long form: Sullivan Summer is an independent scholar, critic, poet, podcaster, and adoptee rights advocate. Her creative work across genres has been published in trade, literary, and academic outlets, and her pop culture hot takes and author interviews can be heard on the Adoption Pop! podcast and Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer, a New Books Network podcast, both of which she produces. Sullivan is also the creator of Black Lit Crit, a weekly newsletter delivering the best in Black literary criticism from around the web. With a total platform reach of 30,000, Sullivan has interviewed winners of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle, PEN Literary, NAACP Image, Hurston/Wright Zora awards, and more.

Sullivan’s poetry chapbook, Performance Anxiety, was published in 2025 by Black Sunflowers Poetry Press. She is a 2025 “Best of the Net” anthology nominee, 2025 YesYes Pamet River Prize semi-finalist, and her poem “Bulletin Board Post,” was awarded third place in the Frontier Poetry 2025 Epistolary contest.

She is a past participant of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Workshop, McCormack (formerly Tin House) Summer Workshop, Yale Writers’ Workshop, and a graduate of the Brooklyn Poets Mentorship Program. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications/Journalism, and a Juris Doctor.

Sullivan is a member of the National Book Critics Circle, Biographers International Organization, the Society of Civil War Historians, the Southern Historical Association, and the African American Intellectual History Society.

When not reading, writing, and podcasting about reading and writing, you can find Sullivan engaging with visitors to the New York Historical, New York’s oldest museum, where she is a Docent.