Musgrave landing: Musings on the writing life

by Susan Musgrave

Book by Musgrave, Susan

Genres: Writing, Memoir

127 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Susan Musgrave is a Canadian poet and children's writer. She was born in Santa Cruz, California to Canadian parents, and currently lives in British Columbia, dividing her time between Sidney and Haida Gwaii.

Musgrave was married to Stephen Reid, a writer, convicted bank robber and former member of the infamous band of thieves known as the Stopwatch Gang. Their relationship was chronicled in 1999 in the CBC series Life and Times.

She currently teaches creative writing in the University of British Columbia's Optional Residency Master of Fine Arts Program.

Recognizing a life in writing, the Writers' Trust presented Susan Musgrave with the 2014 Matt Cohen Award for her lifetime of work.

Reviews

[Zoom · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. It's a collection of essays, mostly about the life of being a writer, and it's ripe with quotes from other writers. Susan Musgrave's wry sense of humour fuels this collection. She doesn't take herself - or the writerly life - all that seriously.

She's sometimes billed as one of the very few Canadian writers who has managed to support herself through writing, but I suspect she'd be the first to say it's at least partly because she has managed to forge a lifestyle that doesn't require much money.

If you sometimes dream, as I do, about being a writer, you should read this book.

(Perhaps ironically, I purchased my autographed copy of this book online for a penny, plus $6.99 shipping.)

[Margaret Joyce · Rating 3 out of 5]

I,a relatively sober woman of a certain age, laughed, chuckled, snorted and guffawed my way through this collection of wry existential commentaries on day to day life. Musgrave wrote it '94, but her essays reference life long before that. Her cultural markers(dentist trays that swing in front of the patient, Fisher-Price monitors, Curious George, Cosmopolitan magazine and talk of 'Feminism') are most interesting, given that this is now 2013 and many of the details of ordinary life have since morphed into things largely techno. A good read'!