lyrical, character-driven fiction with a gritty edge
Sarah Hunter, Booklist
I grew up on Long Island in the 1970s and 80s. So that was weird.
I worked in advertising photography in the city until one day an art director subjected me to a diatribe about how mink teddy bears were unethical. The thing is, the art director was wearing alligator shoes at the time. It seemed like a good moment to leave New York.
I went to live on the beach in Oregon for a little while, and then to New Orleans for a longer while. I lived around England for a while and now I live in Wales. One time, a santero told me if I missed my chance to make a decision about where I wanted to live I would wind up wandering the world for the rest of my life. That turned out to be true.
I've done a few degrees in English Literature and published some academic books. I've been an angry performance poet and learned to swallow fire. I've done itinerant farm work and been a cleaner in a leather bar.
I raised a clever and beautiful child, too. That whole time I've been writing, first poetry and then fiction. Like everyone else who writes novels, I wrote a really bad one first and put it away in a drawer.
Then I wrote Little Wrecks, a novel inspired by growing up on Long Island, and people liked it. So the moral of that story is, just because it’s weird doesn’t mean it’s not useful.
These days, I live and work in Cymru. I've got two more novels on the way, and a house, chapel and garden in various states of renovation and repair. The chapel will be a place for everyone, for writing, reading and performance. The garden will be lovely one day. Honest. Currently, I write in a makeshift office in one of the chapel porches. Someday, hopefully soon, I'll be writing in a room in the garden. That is, when I'm not distracted, looking at my favourite mountain.
