Photo caption: Tom McGuane with cutting horse brood mares in Montana, where he lives on a river on 2,000 acres with cattle and horses and his wife of many years. Photo: Audrey Hall

“The open range, the open sea, the open sky, the open wounds of the heart, that’s where writers shine.” The passage from the collection of essays Some Horses speaks volumes about its author, Thomas McGuane. Also a novelist, screenwriter, and journalist, he lives and writes on the range and under the big sky of McLeod, Montana, where he has known and loved some horses. One of his favorites, his treasured Lucky Bottom 79, passed away in 2004 at age 32, but not before McGuane marked the only 156 in the history of Montana cutting. “I had a glow for a week!” he says.

Legendary cutter and McGuane mentor Buster Welch recalls the author’s father sending young Tom to a Montana ranch “to work off some of that energy.” His father asked the long and tall Tom, “If you’re going to college, what do you want to do?”

“Damned if I know, Dad,” McGuane apparently replied, prompting his dad’s quick retort, “Go take English, and if you figure out what you want to do, at least you can tell somebody.”

It proved sound advice. McGuane did take English and though he flunked out of the University of Michigan on his first attempt, he ultimately had the last literary laugh, obtaining a BA in humanities with honors in 1962 from Michigan State. Three years later, he received his MFA from Yale University and the following year was the Wallace Stegner Fellow in creative writing at Stanford University.

When not riding—or fishing—McGuane is writing. His intimate office is set on the banks of a river in a historic hand-hewn cabin with a library addition and a fly-tying corner. To date, he has authored 12 novels, including The Sporting Club, The Bushwhacked Piano, Ninety-two in the Shade, and Nothing but Blue Skies. He also penned To Skin a Cat, a collection of short stories; and nonfiction works including An Outside Chance and The Longest Silence: A Life in Fishing.

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