Susanna J. Sturgis: Writer • Editor • Born-Again Horsegirl

Trivia: Voices of Feminism

Trivia 10 includes my essay "And Will Rise: Notes on Lesbian Extinction." can now be read on the Web. It's a great issue, it's available online, and I'm thrilled to be part of it.

The Mud of the Place

Mud, my novel about year-round Martha's Vineyard (and other stuff), has its own website. It includes info about the book, along with several ways to order it. Check it out!

Now the spider has two websites. For information about my novel, The Mud of the Place, check out the Mudsite.

I'm a freelance editor by trade. I work on fiction, general nonfiction, and scholarly nonfiction in the humanities and social sciences. My clients include trade and university presses, small presses, self-publishers, academics, and individual writers. If you're looking for a capable editor, copyeditor, proofreader, writing coach, or all-round bully to help you start, finish, or polish your project, check out the Editing page. Use the Contact page to send me an e-mail.

My lair also harbors something bloggish. Here is where I muse, maunder, meander, and mumble on subjects including, but not limited to, writing, editing, horses, feminism, music, laundry, license plates, and life on Martha's Vineyard. Check out the Highlights and the Archives for the older stuff.

For biographical info, see About Susanna and A Writer's Resume. And for an idiosyncratic take on the place I call home, visit the Martha's Vineyard tourists and summer people rarely see. Many of my favorite essays from the 1980s and '90s, not to mention the '00s, can now be found under Essays & Articles.

Rhodry Malamutt -- who inspired Pixel, the canine sidekick of one of Mud's protagonists -- died in February 2008. Check out the photo gallery for some scenes from his long life. Rhodry taught me that life is better when you have a dog to share it with, so Fellow Traveller moved in as a small puppy. He's already two and a half. You can follow our adventures, with plenty of photos, on his page.

This year has already been one of big changes. In March, I replaced Uhura, my old Mazda pickup, with a Subaru Forester, now named Malvina, after singer-songwriter Malvina Reynolds. On June 1, Allie, my equine companion for more than 10 years, left for her new home -- which was also her old home: I sold her back to her breeders, Hartland Morgans of Windsor, N.Y. She's been romancing a young stallion, and we're all hoping for a 2011 foal.

I'm back to working on novel #2, The Squatters' Speakeasy, which takes place about a decade after The Mud of the Place and involves some of the same characters. It concerns a disorganized gaggle of Vineyard musicians, iconoclasts, misfits, and weirdos who take over a trophy house and turn it into a coffeehouse. My other big project is a personal/political memoir, To Be Rather Than to Seem: A Writer's Education. From time to time pieces of it appear in the Bloggery.

Now a house that is built upon sand has a view of the waters,
And a rich man sits feasting his eyes on their power and might.
But El Nino remembers the poor, and their sons and their daughters,
And the waters reclaim what is theirs in the dark of the night.

Trivia: Voices of Feminism

The Mud of the Place

rev. 14 August 2010