Samantha Hunt

Samantha Hunt (born May 15, 1971) is an American novelist, essayist and short-story writer.

Samantha Hunt
Born (1971-05-15) May 15, 1971
OccupationNovelist
LanguageEnglish
NationalityAmerican
Notable worksThe Dark Dark,Mr. Splitfoot,The Invention of Everything Else
Website
www.samanthahunt.net

She is the author of The Dark Dark, published by Farrar, Straus, Giroux; The Seas, published by MacAdam/Cage;[1] and the novels Mr. Splitfoot and The Invention of Everything Else,[2] published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Early life

Hunt was born the youngest of six children[3] in 1971 in Pound Ridge, New York. Her father was an editor, her mother was a painter[4]. She moved in 1989 for to attend the University of Vermont[5], where she studied literature, printmaking and geology. She received her MFA from Warren Wilson College, before moving to New York City in 1999[4].

Career

Books

Hunt's debut novel, The Seas, first published in 2004, is a magical realism novel about a young girl in a Northern town who believes herself to be a mermaid[6]. The book was voted one of Village Voice Literary Supplement's Favorite Books of 2004[7], and won the National Book Foundation award for "5 under 35" in 2006[8]. In 2018, The Seas was republished by Tin House Books in 2018 with a foreword by Maggie Nelson[7].

In 2008, she published her second novel, The Invention of Everything Else through Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The novel provides a fictionalized account of the final days of inventor Nikola Tesla. It won both the Bard Fiction Prize in 2010, and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize[9].

Her other novels include Mr. Splitfoot (2016), a ghost story[10], and The Dark Dark: Stories (2017), a collection of short stories.

Hunt's short stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, McSweeney's, The Atlantic, A Public Space, Cabinet, Esquire, The Believer, Blind Spot, Harper’s Bazaar, the Village Voice, Seed Magazine, Tin House, New York Magazine, on the radio program This American Life and in a number of anthologies including Trampoline edited by Kelly Link. Hunt’s play, The Difference Engine, a story about the life of Charles Babbage, was produced by the Theater of a Two-Headed Calf.

Awards

Hunt won the Bard Fiction Prize, the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 award[11] and was a finalist for the Orange Prize[12]. In 2017, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction[13]

Literary Influences

Hunt's credits her experience as being one of six children for her interest in literature[14], her dialogue writing[15], and how she writes about motherhood in her novels[3]. She cites Joseph T. Shipley’s Dictionary of Word Origins as making her who she is today[14].

Profession

Hunt is a professor of writing at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY[10].

Personal life

Hunt and her husband live in Trivoli, New York with their three daughters[13].

In 2015, Hunt revealed that she had undergone treatment for ovarian cancer[16].

Bibliography

Books

• The Dark Dark: Stories (2017)
• Mr Splitfoot (2016)
• The Invention of Everything Else (2008)
• The Seas (2004)
• My Inventions and Other Writings by Nikola Tesla and Samantha Hunt (introduction - 2011)

Online Texts

Fiction

• A Love Story - a short story
• The Yellow - a short story
• Three Days - a short story
• Go Team - a short story
• Reading at Google

Essays

• There Is Only One Direction
• Queer Theorem
• Terrible Twins
• This American Life
• A Brief History of Books That Do Not Exist

References
  1. Lyons, Stephen (19 December 2004). "A 'mermaid holds the key to a beloved sailors fate". San Francisco Chronicle.
  2. Thomas, Louisa (23 March 2008). "At The Hotel New Yorker". New York Times.
  3. Leyshon, Cressida. "This Week in Fiction: Samantha Hunt on the Unspoken Terrors of Being a New Mother". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2020-03-09.
  4. "Samantha Hunt". www.goodreads.com. Retrieved 2020-03-09.
  5. "Subscribe to read | Financial Times". www.ft.com. Retrieved 2020-03-09.
  6. "The Seas". www.goodreads.com. Retrieved 2020-03-09.
  7. "Samantha Hunt : : The Seas". samanthahunt.net. Retrieved 2020-03-09.
  8. "The Seas". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2020-03-09.
  9. "Samantha Hunt". www.samanthahunt.net. Retrieved 2020-03-10.
  10. "Pratt Institute". www.pratt.edu. Retrieved 2020-03-10.
  11. "KQED, Public Media for Northern California". http://www.kqed.org/arts/profile/index.jsp?essid=22393. External link in |publisher= (help); Missing or empty |url= (help)
  12. Itzkoff, David (21 April 2009). "Orange Prize Finalists Announced". New York Times.
  13. "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Samantha Hunt". Retrieved 2020-03-10.
  14. "Samantha Hunt: By the Book". The New York Times. 2018-06-21. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-03-10.
  15. Gebremedhin, Thomas (2020-02-11). "Samantha Hunt on the Unbearable Flatness of Being". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2020-03-10.
  16. "There Is Only One Direction". The Cut. Retrieved 2020-03-10.
Interviews

• Interview at Bookslut
• Interview on the Bat Segundo Show

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