Hunter's first novel is Ugly Girls.From her Q & A with Sarah Rose Etter at Fanzine:
SRE: Ugly Girls is a hell of a book – I could practically taste a trailer park while I read it. What drove that book for you?The Page 69 Test: Ugly Girls.
LH: I wanted to write a fairy tale about a girl who couldn’t feel fear. That’s where it started. It eventually became about all the ways people misunderstand each other, all the ways they assume things about themselves and each other, and how that can lead to explosions. It became about identity: the identity you cultivate, the identity you have no power to change, and how those two things can lead to disaster. I also wanted to write teenaged girls that ran the spectrum of ugliness. I wanted them to be real, and I wanted to take the risk that they might be unlikable. Because guess what, that’s life. Girls and women can be unlikable and ugly and make terrible decisions and trade power back and forth like anyone else.
SRE: Wait, wait, let’s go back to the explosions.
LH: Well, by explosions I guess I mean varying shades of disappointment. “Disappointment” is a word I use a lot in the novel. How someone reacts to disappointment is almost like a fingerprint. Because disappointment, and expectation, actually reveals a lot about the expecter. Just think how many expectations and assumptions you have to count on just to get through the day. These are all things that are important to you as an individual. They are important to the world, the safety, you’ve created. This is beyond the actual world. Outside of that. Or inside of it but sealed in whatever you’ve built that makes it possible for you to exist without screaming. Baby Girl feels ugly so she turns that on its head and draws power from it. Tries to use it as a weapon. But it is a papier mache weapon, easily bent, and then she is weaponless. So she grabs...[read on]
--Marshal Zeringue