Samantha Hunt – författare

A genre-bending exploration of haunting, life, death, and the power of books from award-winning author Samantha Hunt."The Unwritten Book is one of our most interesting and bold writers . . . [offering] a characteristically wild effort that defies genre distinctions, flits from the profound to the mundane with fierce intelligence and searching restlessness, and at its best, delves deep into the recesses of the human heart with courageous abandon . . . An intoxicating blend of humor and pathos." —Priscilla Gilman, The Boston Globe"Eerie, profound, and daring, this is a book only the inimitable Hunt could write." —Adrienne Westenfeld, EsquireIn her first work of nonfiction, Samantha Hunt, the award-winning author of The Dark Dark, explores the importance of books, the idea of haunting, and messages from beyond. The Unwritten Book is a vivid and grateful meditation on life, death, motherhood, addiction, and the ghosts that shape us.Each chapter gathers subjects that haunt: dead people, the towering library of unread books, the forest. Through literary criticism, history, family memoir, and a very special ghost book found in her father''s desk after his death, Hunt looks for patterns, clues, and wisdom. Inspired by W. G. Sebald, James Joyce, Ali Smith, Toni Morrison, and William Faulkner, she explores how we insulate ourselves from the past and how we misinterpret the world.The Unwritten Book revels in the magic, connectivity, and randomness of everyday existence. At its heart is the immense weight of love, conveyed with Hunt''s signature blend of humor, pathos, and courageous vulnerability. This genre-bending work of creative nonfiction is a must-read for fans of haunting, insightful, and deeply personal stories.

Nat and Ruth are young orphans, living in a crowded foster home run by an eccentric religious fanatic. When a traveling con-man comes knocking, they see their chance to escape and join him on the road, proclaiming they can channel the dead - for a price, of courseDecades later, in a different time and place, Cora is too clever for her office job, too scared of her abysmal lover to cope with her unplanned pregnancy, and she too is looking for a way out. So when her mute Aunt Ruth pays her an unexpected visit, apparently on a mysterious mission, she decides to join her. Together the two women set out on foot, on a strange and unforgettable odyssey across the state of New York. Where is Ruth taking them? Where has she been? And who - or what - has she hidden in the woods at the end of the road? Ingenious, infectious, subversive and strange, Mr Splitfoot will take you on a journey you will not regret - and will never forget.

A Best Book of the Year: NPR, Vogue, The Huffington Post, The Chicago Review of Books, The National Post, Electric Literature, Kirkus''Wields such a subtle and alien power . . . Wonderfully spooky'' Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker''A feminist manifesto threaded through imaginative fiction; it''s the most evocative, impressive collection I''ve read this year'' Daniel Johnson, The Paris ReviewStep into The Dark Dark, where an award-winning, acclaimed novelist debuts her first collection of short stories and conjures entire universes in just a few pages - conjures, splits in half, mines for humor, destroys with absurdity, and regenerates. In prose that sparkles and haunts, Samantha Hunt playfully pushes the bounds of the expected and fills every corner with vibrant life, imagining numerous ways in which the weird might poke its way through the mundane. Each of these ten haunting, inventive tales brings us to the brink of creation, mortality and immortality, infidelity and transformation, technological innovation and historical revision, loneliness and communion, and every kind of love.Laced with lyricism, hope, Hunt''s characteristic sly wit, and her unflinching gaze into the ordinary horrors of human existence, The Dark Dark celebrates the mysteries and connections that swirl around us. It''s never all the same, Hunt tells us. It changes a tiny bit every time. See for yourself.

A contemporary gothic from an author in the company of Kelly Link and Aimee Bender, Mr. Splitfoot tracks two women in two times as they march toward a mysterious reckoning.

Ruth and Nat are orphans, packed into a house full of abandoned children run by a religious fanatic. To entertain their siblings, they channel the dead. Decades later, Ruth’s niece Cora finds herself accidentally pregnant. After years of absence, Aunt Ruth appears, mute and full of intention. She is on a mysterious mission, leading Cora on an odyssey across the entire state of New York on foot. Where is Ruth taking them? Where has she been? And who—or what—has she hidden in the woods at the end of the road?

In an ingeniously structured dual narrative, two separate timelines move toward the same point of crisis. Their merging will upend and reinvent the whole. A subversive ghost story that is carefully plotted and elegantly constructed, Mr. Splitfoot will set your heart racing and your brain churning. Mysteries abound, criminals roam free, utopian communities show their age, and the mundane world intrudes on the supernatural—and vice versa.

"The Seas took me back to how I felt as a kid, when you''re newly falling in love with literature, newly shocked by its capacity to cast a spell..." Maggie Nelson"[It] blew me away because of the beauty of the language . . . I found myself highlighting about 85% of the book for the language. It is so beautifully written" Jodi PicoultMoored in a coastal fishing town so far north that the highways only run south, the unnamed narrator of The Seas is a misfit. She''s often the subject of cruel local gossip. Her father, a sailor, walked into the ocean eleven years earlier and never returned, leaving his wife and daughter to keep a forlorn vigil. Surrounded by water and beckoned by the sea, she clings to what her father once told her: that she is a mermaid.True to myth, she finds herself in hard love with a land-bound man, an Iraq War veteran thirteen years her senior. The mesmerizing, fevered coming-of-age tale that follows will land her in jail. Her otherworldly escape will become the stuff of legend. With the inventive brilliance and psychological insight that have earned her international acclaim, Samantha Hunt pulls readers into an undertow of impossible love and intoxication, blurring the lines between reality and fairy tale, hope and delusion, sanity and madness.