Sofia @ Northern Arizona Uni.

Lite märklig uppgift vi fick i journalistiken till imorgon. Men himla rolig faktiskt! En obituary är en dödsannons fast man skriver mycket mer och om personens liv. Så vi fick fria händer att hitta på hur vårt liv varit och hur vi dör. Det svåraste var att hitta på fina namn på make och barn. Jag hittade på en massa kul med min! Jag vinner ett Pulizter-Prize, gifter mig med en irländare, slår mig till ro i SF och får tre barn. Julia gifter sig med en ryss och Klara flyttar med mig till Frankrike.

Om mitt liv blir en tredjedel så bra och händelserikt som i min fiction obituary så kan jag skratta mig lycklig!

Här är den iaf:

Sofia Beatrice Elinore Sullivan, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author from among others New York Times and Chicago Tribune, died of age on Wednesday in her home in Séte, France. She was 92.

Mrs. Sullivan was born in Umeå, Sweden on February 20, 1988. She spent most of her childhood in Kristianstad in southern Sweden. Her father was a legal advisor and her mother a nursing teacher.

“Our parents always encouraged us to do well in school and told us the sky is the limit, and that had a huge impact on Sofia,” survived sister Julia Rowanski said.

After graduating from Österäng High School in Kristianstad, Mrs. Sullivan lived in Barcelona for a while before she decided to move to the U.S. In 2008 she started attending Santa Barbara City College, Ca.

After two years at City College Mrs. Sullivan moved to Liverpool, England to study at The Beatles program and to travel around the UK with her sister who was studying in Newcastle at the time.

In 2012, Mrs. Sullivan was accepted to UC Berkeley with full scholarship and majored in Journalism.

“It was a true pleasure to have her as a classmate and I especially remember how we together went reporting for our assignments,” survived friend Lindsay Smith said.

After graduating from UC Berkeley, Mrs. Sullivan moved to NYC to start building a career as a journalist. She started working at The New York Times and traveled to the Middle East to report from there.

She also reported from South America and won the Pulitzer Prize for her best-selling book “A Journey Through the New South America”.

A couple of years later Mrs. Sullivan moved to Chicago to work for the Chicago Tribune. She met her future husband, Gerard Sullivan, an International Relations teacher. They moved to San Francisco where Mrs. Sullivan started working for the San Francisco Chronicles.

In 2017 they had their first child, Chloé. They raised her in San Francisco where Mrs. Sullivan’s parents had moved to from Sweden in order to be with them and the child but also some already existing family. Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan also spent much time in both Sweden and Ireland, the couple’s origin countries.

“Growing up in San Francisco with an Irish father and a Swedish mother and grandparents was absolutely amazing,” daughter Chloé Sullivan said.

“We had such an exciting childhood with travels all over the world, but we still felt like we came home every time we got back to San Francisco,” Ms Sullivan continued.

Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan made San Francisco their home town and all their children were born there. The couple had twins four years after their first child, Elias and Gemma.

The five-person family kept traveling and working in San Francisco.

When the children were adults Mrs. Sullivan kept working for different newspapers and also went to Lund, Sweden and stayed a couple of years writing and lecturing the English language and Journalism at University of Lund.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan retired when Mrs. Sullivan was 64 years old. They went back to San Francisco and kept traveling around and doing as much as they could before they would get to old.

Mrs. Sullivan started taking French classes when she was 70. “She was so eager to learn and did so in a short time,” son Elias said.

At the age of 72, Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan left San Francisco and the US to move to France. They settled down in a small town in the southern part, Séte. Some of Mrs. Sullivan’s friends from her teenage and 20’s moved there too.

“Sofia never really wanted to go back and live in Sweden when she was older and big cities in the US she felt were too stressful at that age,” friend Klara Håkansson said.

“She wanted to grow old somewhere warm and sunny and where she could eat good food, drink good wines, watch movies and read books, things she always enjoyed,” Håkansson continued.

Surviving are her husband Gerard Sullivan, daughter Chloé and Gemma, son Elias, sister Julia Rowanski, brother Gustav Gjerstad, 6 grand children and 4 great grand children, and many dear friends.

There will not be a funeral, but a ceremony where her ashes will be spread from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Gathering after will be held at Chloé Sullivan’s place on Edge Hill Road 14 in Mill Valley at 4 p.m. Sunday.

The family requests donations to be made to various environmental protecting organizations worldwide.