Lindsay Hunter

Lindsay Hunter is a writer living in Chicago. She co-hosts the Quickies! reading series, and her collection of stories, Daddy's, is out now from featherproof books. Find her at lindsayhunter.com.


what are you reading now

Right now I'm reading Hellfire, a biography of Jerry Lee Lewis. Been getting more obsessed with the Killer lately. It heals me to learn about the depths of freak in other artists.


classic you’ve been meaning to read

There are so many! I feel like I read all the time but never get anywhere. I've never read any J.M. Coetzee, for instance. Or Thomas Pynchon. And I'd love to read The Brothers Karamazov. Fucking The Count of Monte Cristo even! I'm truly a sham of a writer.


last book you finished in a single sitting

I think it was Steve Martin's autobio of his comedy life, Born Standing Up. If I saw him on the street I'd probably tongue his ear or something. I think I also read Mary Robison's Why Did I Ever in one sitting - dammit that book is good.


book you borrowed and never returned

My friend just let me borrow Amy Hempel's Reasons to Live, and then she moved to New Orleans. Oops. I've also been lent Slash's biography and Y: The Last Man, Book One, and I have no idea when I'll get to those. Never lend me anything, future friends.


if you could take a cross-country road trip with any literary character

I'd love to be in the car with Roberta/Clyde and her father in Cruddy. I'd likely be filled with a resigned kind of dull terror and sitting in a cooling puddle of urine.


most treasured book in your collection

My husband, for my 30th birthday, got me a first edition copy of The Stones of Summer. It's on the shelf above my laptop so I can look up at it and remember to take risks, try to build something in my writing, and to do it for no other reason but for the pleasure of the words. Of getting the story out and just right, even if that means it's a fucking mess. But a good mess.


book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone

Oh man. I don't have a coffee table, but I do remember an advisor asking me who I was inspired by, and I'd just read The Sound and the Fury, so I said I liked Faulkner, and the advisor said "Now, did you just say that to impress me?" and I was stunned, and I think probably yeah, I said Faulkner because it sounded better than saying V.C. Andrews or something.


if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Probably the Ninth Letter. Or Hobart. Or Artifice. There are too many.


best thing you’ve read online recently

I keep telling people about this story in the Somnambulist Quarterly by Athena Nilssen. It's a year old but it's here and it's incredible. "A Flower for You."


most anticipated upcoming release

Patrick Somerville's new collection, The Universe in Miniature in Miniature, from featherproof books. It's gonna rule. And earlier this summer I had the privilege of hearing Blake Butler read from his forthcoming book, There Is No Year, and I cannot wait to read the whole thing.


recommended reading list:


Books About Murder For People Who Want to Vomit When Watching NCIS or CSI or Bones, and Hey, These Are All Written by Women


- The Secret History by Donna Tartt

- In the Woods by Tana French

- Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

- The End of Alice by A.M. Homes

- Crime Album Stories: Paris 1886-1902 by Eugenia Parry