Thomas McGuane

Thomas Francis McGuane III (born December 11, 1939) is an American author. His work includes ten novels, short fiction and screenplays, as well as three collections of essays devoted to his life in the outdoors. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The National Cutting Horse Association Hall of Fame and the Flyfishing Hall of Fame.

Early life

McGuane was born in Wyandotte, Michigan, the son of upwardly mobile Irish Catholic parents who moved to the Midwest from Massachusetts. His primary education included boarding school at Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, from which he graduated in 1958, but also included work on a ranch in Wyoming, ubiquitous fishing and hunting, and a difficult relationship with his alcoholic father that would later shadow much of his fiction. McGuane prefers to consider his roots matrilineal, on which side he is descended from a rich storytelling clan.

He envisioned himself as a writer from a very young age, admiring what he perceived as the adventurous life of a writer as much as the prospect of writing. When he was ten years old, he got into a physical altercation with a friend over differing descriptions of a sunset. He began a serious devotion to writing by the age of 16.