Interview with Lindsay Hunter

I discovered Lindsay Hunter the old fashioned way: word of mouth. When I was in grad school, I noticed that whenever someone wanted to talk about a “really cool writer” or “someone you should totally check out” one of the names that would continually come up was Lindsay Hunter. And of course when I did read her books, she absolutely delivered! In fact, the week my husband handed me a copy of Hot Springs Drive, I brought it straight to my writer’s group as something we could get excited about.

Lindsay Hunter is the author of the collections Daddy's and Don't Kiss Me and the novels Ugly Girls, Eat Only When You're Hungry, and her latest, Hot Springs Drive.

Hot Springs Drive is described as “an urgent, vicious blade of a novel about a shocking betrayal and its aftermath, asking just how far you’ll go to have everything you want.”

I’m so happy Lindsay agreed to this interview!

Hot Springs Drive was one of the first books chosen by Roxane Gay Books, which is so cool! Can you tell us a little bit about its path to publication?

Oh man. That was such a wild ride. I had a book out on submission (a novel called Broke Even) in the summer/early fall of 2020, and we were getting a lot of "we really love Lindsay's writing, and this book is so beautiful, but we can't sell it." Over and over and over again. It was the pandemic, an election year, my kids were very little, and I was failing to sell my next novel, a novel I'd been so sure about. It still hurts! I started writing Hot Springs Drive in bursts, whenever I had the time, and because I was heartbroken and bewildered by what was happening in the publishing world and in my own writing life—how could I have been so wrong?—I decided I'd write with zero guardrails. I'd write as freely as I ever had. It was...SO FUN. I felt feral. Roxane reached out to me one day in, I believe, early fall of 2021 and asked me if I had any unpublished books, and I sent her the unfinished, unedited, ragged draft of HSD, and—likely because we'd worked together before, and are mutual fans of each other's work—she took it. What was she thinking? What a miracle she is.

I'm a huge fan of your podcast I'm A Writer, But...! I would imagine it's a lot of work for you— can you talk about balancing your own writing with reading other author's work and interviewing them?

It's been hard! I have a hard time saying no. Lots of publicists and authors reach out to me, and I want to interview them all, but I just don't have the time. We started IAWB in the fall of 2020. I somehow had so much more time then, even though my family was home all the time. We (my former co-host Alex Higley and I) began recording an episode a week, sometimes more than that. It started snowballing. Now that I'm teaching and working on new projects, I don't have as much time. And my kids are in school, which comes with its own obligations and events and strategizing and coordinating. So I am only going to do two a month now, which is still too much!  But I so value that connection with other writers, that deep connection I've felt during every conversation, and the exposure it's given me to books I may never have encountered before. I love doing it so much, I truly do.

Can you give us some reading recommendations?

Right now I'm reading Emma Copley Eisenberg's HOUSEMATES, which is a book that takes its time, is thorough and generous and questing and lovely. I absolutely loved Ella Baxter's WOO WOO, which is out later this year. Beth Morgan's A TOUCH OF JEN is my soulmate book. And Amy Shearn's DEAR EDNA SLOANE drove me directly to my laptop to write, it's that life-giving. 

Can you share a song with us that captures something about some aspect of your book, whether it's a song you listened to while writing or just something that you think fits the vibe?

Such a great question. I don't tend to listen to music when I'm writing! It distracts me. I like to hear cars passing by, birds, people laughing or bickering out my window. But I had two song lyrics I wanted as my epigraph but couldn't afford and they were:

I'll rip your heart in two

And I'll leave you lying on the bed

—Guns 'n Roses, You Could Be Mine

Let me out, let me out

Let me out, let me out

Let me out, let me out

Let me out, let me out

Let me out, let me out

Let me out

—Dehd, Desire

Thank you, Lindsay!