Sullivan, C(harles) W(illiam) III 1944-

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SULLIVAN, C(harles) W(illiam) III 1944-

PERSONAL: Born June 7, 1944, in Kingsport, TN; son of Charles William, Jr. (in business) and Helen (a homemaker; maiden name, Sollie) Sullivan; married Ann Barry (a storyteller), June 25, 1966; children: Jason M., Aaron M. Education: State University of New York at Albany, B.A., 1966, M.A., 1969; University of Oregon, D.A., 1975, Ph.D., 1976. Politics: "Cynic." Religion: "Mystic."

ADDRESSES: Home—206 Pineview Dr., Greenville, NC 27834. Office—Department of English and Journalism, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC 27858-4353.

CAREER: State University of New York at Albany, instructor in English, 1968-71; University of Oregon, Eugene, instructor, 1976-77; East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, began as assistant professor, became professor of English, 1977—; writer.

MEMBER: International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (vice president, 1988-92; president, 1992-95), Modern Language Association of America, American Folklore Society, Science Fiction Research Association.

AWARDS, HONORS: Centennial Award, American Folklore Society, 1989.

WRITINGS:

As Tomorrow Becomes Today, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1974.

Welsh Celtic Myth in Modern Fantasy, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1989.

(Coeditor) Herbal Magical Medicine, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 1992.

Science Fiction for Young Readers, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1993.

The Mabinogi: A Book of Essays, Garland Publishing (New York, NY), 1996.

(Editor) The Dark Fantastic: Selected Essays from the Ninth International Conference on the Fantastic Arts, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1997.

Young Adult Science Fiction, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1999.

(Coeditor) Worldviews and the American West: The Life of the Place Itself, Utah State University Press (Logan, UT), 2000.

The Hougoumont Diary of Denis B. Cashman, 1867-1868, Wolfhound Press (Dublin, Ireland), 2001.

Contributor of numerous articles on mythology, folklore, and science fiction to various journals and periodicals. Editor, Children's Folklore Review, 1979—.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Continuing research on Welsh Celtic mythology and folklore.

SIDELIGHTS: C. W. Sullivan III told CA: "The official beginning of my career was my discovery of medieval literature, and especially Arthurian literature, as a graduate student at the State University of New York at Albany. Over the next few years, I added several important perspectives to that focus as I specialized in folklore and mythology for my doctorate at the University of Oregon, where I was able to study the Welsh Celtic myths and legends I had previously found in the pages of fantasy novels. Little did I know that I was dealing with materials long discriminated against; the Welsh Celtic materials (like their Scandinavian cousins) had been pushed aside by the seemingly more sophisticated Greek and Roman materials as sources for British and American literature, and fantasy literature was only a popular genre, highly suspect as a field of study at the university level.

"The unofficial beginning of my career was, of course, all those children's books my mother read to me and the subsequent science fiction and fantasy library I built for myself.

"I have been fortunate to have been able to follow those leads thus far in my career. As a professor of English, I am able to teach courses in northern European mythology, American folklore, science fiction, and modern fantasy; and, because I teach those subjects, I can do my research in those fields. I can lie on the couch reading fantasy or science fiction and call it my job; I can go to conferences of the American Folklore Society or the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, where people are genuinely interested in folklore, mythology, legend, and medieval literature; I can find granting organizations to give me money to do research in Wales and England; and I can write about the ways in which the Welsh Celtic myths and legends have influenced literature and culture. I am especially pleased with the book Welsh Celtic Myths in Modern Fantasy, an examination of the myths and legends that appear in modern fantasy, as well as an analysis of why the authors have chosen to use those materials; and I am also pleased with a bit of more conventional scholarship, 'Inheritance and Lordship in Math,' which deals directly with the ways in which a medieval Welsh tale reflects the culture from which it grew."