Susanna J. Sturgis   Martha's Vineyard writer and editor
writer editor born-again horse girl
portrait of Susanna with her horse


I'm a dyed-in-the-wool and raised-on-maple-syrup New Englander; I grew up outside of Boston in the same town my father was born in. After an adolescence devoted primarily to hanging out with horses and studying history, I spent the next decade and a half immersed in the anti–Vietnam War movement, assorted student-political activities, the women's liberation movement, and eventually the women's community of Washington, D.C., where I specialized in the written word -- writing, editing, and bookselling -- and developed a specialty in fantasy/science fiction.

In 1985, burned out by urban life and community melodramas, I flummoxed my friends by not only moving to Martha's Vineyard but staying there. I remained involved in feminist print, expanded my involvement in f/sf, and added theater to my passions and journalism to my résumé. Gradually it dawned on me that Martha's Vineyard was my muse and my writerly conundrum as well as my home.

Since the late 1970s, my reviews and essays have appeared in such feminist and gay/lesbian publications as off our backs, Lambda Book Report, Lesbian Contradiction, the Women's Review of Books, and Sojourner; my poetry and prose poems in Calyx, Frontiers, Sinister Wisdom, and other journals; my stories in several anthologies; and many features, op-eds, and theater reviews in the Martha's Vineyard Times. Each of my three one-act plays has been produced at least once. I also edited three anthologies of original fantasy/science fiction by women for Crossing Press: Memories and Visions (1989), The Women Who Walk Through Fire (1990); and Tales of Magic Realism by Women (1991).

I am currently working on two novels. The Squatters' Speakeasy features two mysterious archers, a young musician trying to chart the course of his life, and a bunch of housing activists who occupy the Tashmoo overlook. In Wolfie, a troubled dog and a girl in trouble wind up on Shannon Merrick's doorstep. The latter spun off from the former; it involves several of the same characters and takes place around the same time. I now have two blogs going: From the Seasonally Occupied Territories is about living on Martha's Vineyard, and Write Through It is about writing, editing, and how to keep going. I support myself, more or less, as a full-time freelance copyeditor and occasional dog-sitter.

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