“Hunters” by John Fulton appeared in Issue 33 and can be read here.
We’d love to hear more about this story.
This piece started with an idea about a single mother who was terminally ill and trying to lead a life that felt somewhat normal and that would be full, in terms of sex and even love. The idea came to me after reading a New Yorker article about what it’s like to be an oncologist and seeing a film about a person living with AIDS and trying to date. But that idea didn’t come off the page for some months or even years. (It’s all a blur now since I’m always working on many projects at the same time.) Once I got those opening paragraphs and discovered that the daughter would overhear the message from Charles about a first date, the story unfolded for me.
What was the most difficult aspect of writing this story?
The second paragraph was a doozy. There’s a lot of information there, and the threat was that the paragraph could just overload the story and feel dull. It had to be very clear even while it was communicating something complex. It also had to get at the subtle idea that Kate is in denial about what is (again) happening to her. I’ll also add that the counterpoint between the teenagers (they’re starkly different than their parents and from each other) emerged slowly and shaped the story in ways that I didn’t foresee. While the story is mostly about the central romantic relationship of Kate and Charles, it’s also about what it means to be a parent with a terminal illness. How does one do this? How do you care for a child knowing that you won’t be around to ensure the safety of your child and watch that child grow and develop?
Recommend a book for us which was published within the last decade.
Read Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson. This author is well known for his Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Orphan Master’s Son. But his stories are stunning. They are long, full, incredibly well written, authentic and fully imagined at the same time (a combination that is rare, I find). Their subject matter is vast, covering everything from an escapee from North Korea trying to return to his country to survivors of Hurricane Katrina to the life of former East German citizens dealing with crimes they committed in a country that no longer exists. It’s a great read.
If you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be? Why?
That’s a tough one. There are so many interesting authors. But I’d love to pick the mind of Joy Williams, whose stories are fascinating, inscrutable, and beguiling. Her characters are often deeply unpleasant and hard to like. But they’re fascinating and strange in the best possible way. And while there is something despicable about many of them, they seem to wrestle with angels or demons. Her work has a spiritual dimension that is often absent from contemporary work. The riddle of God (or a god) marks a lot of her work.
What are you working on now? What’s next?
I’m working on a new story collection that has just been accepted for publication. Most of the stories are done—or, rather, I thought they were done. But not all of them are where I want them to be. That’s got my attention. And I’m also working on first drafts of some very new stories. And I’m thinking about a new novel while contemplating going back to a novel that I’ve written multiple drafts of. It’s still not there and I may have some ideas for it.
Our thanks to John for taking the time to answer a few questions and share this story. Read “Hunters” here: https://www.sequestrum.org/fiction-hunters.
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John Fulton has published three books of fiction: Retribution, which won the Southern Review Fiction Prize, the novel More Than Enough, and The Animal Girl, which was long listed for the Story Prize. His fiction has been awarded the Pushcart Prize and been published in Zoetrope, Oxford American, and The Southern Review. New stories are forthcoming or have recently appeared in The Sun, Fiction, Ploughshares, and The Missouri Review, and his third story collection The Flounder will appear in the spring of 2023. He teaches fiction writing at the University of Massachusetts Boston.