Samantha Hunt

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Samantha Hunt
Samantha hunt 5213014.jpg
Born (1971-05-15) May 15, 1971 (age 50)
OccupationNovelist
LanguageEnglish
NationalityAmerican
Notable worksThe Dark Dark,Mr. Splitfoot,The Invention of Everything Else
Website
www.samanthahunt.net

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

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 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]

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. ^ Jump up to: a b 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. ^ Jump up to: a b "Samantha Hunt". www.goodreads.com. Retrieved 2020-03-09.
  5. ^ "Subscribe to read | Financial Times". www.ft.com. Retrieved 2020-03-09. Cite uses generic title (help)
  6. ^ "The Seas". www.goodreads.com. Retrieved 2020-03-09.
  7. ^ Jump up to: a b "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. ^ Jump up to: a b "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. ^ Jump up to: a b "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.

External links[]

Interviews

Interview at Bookslut
• Interview on the Bat Segundo Show

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