Subtitle: Profiles from the Garden State
Author: Al Sullivan
Subject: New Jersey and the Region
Paper ISBN 0-8135-2950-6
Pages: 248 pp., 30 photos
Description: A collection of feature stories about Garden State locals by a New Jersey reporter

2001 New Jersey Press Association Journalist of the Year

Praise for Everyday People

"Skunk hunters, tax assessors, riverkeepers and social workers: Al Sullivan tells the stories of his 'ordinary' people extraordinarily well."-Peter Genovese, author of Jersey Diners and The Great American Road Trip: U.S. 1, Maine to Florida

"Sullivan has lived every journalist's dream: find real people and tell their stories. As a reporter and writer, he explores the human side, which is, after all, the only side that matters."-Mark Di Ionno, author of New Jersey's Coastal Heritage and A Guide to New Jersey's Revolutionary War Trail

You don't have to live in New Jersey to recognize the people in Sullivan's stories. They are the librarians and tax assessors, attorneys and hot-dog vendors, poets and politicians that make every American town special.

In this time of ever-shorter news stories telling us everything that's wrong with the world, it's a nice change of pace to read about someone like Felix Addeo, who takes time out of his busy schedule to teach middle school kids what it's like to be an accountant. Or biomedical engineer Lois Ross, who twice a year leads a group of volunteers to clean up a local pond. Through richly detailed stories-a kind of writing that has all but disappeared from our local newspapers-about small-town people in extraordinary situations, Sullivan depicts the characters that enliven life in the Garden State.

Al Sullivan is a staff writer for the Hudson Current and the Secaucus Reporter. He has won a number of awards from the New Jersey Press Association and the New Jersey Society of Professional Journalism.