Laird Hunt is the author of eight novels, a collection of stories, and two book-length translations from French. His reviews and essays have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and others. He teaches in the Department of Literary Arts at Brown University and lives in Providence, Rhode Island. A finalist for the 2021 National Book Award (Fiction), Hunt’s Zorrie: A Novel (Bloomsbury) follows a woman searching for her place in the world – and finding it in rural Indiana. Growing up, Zorrie Underwood’s modest and hardscrabble home county was the only constant in her life. After losing both her parents, Zorrie moved in with her aunt, whose death orphaned her all over again. Cast off into the perilous realities and sublime landscapes of rural, Depression-era Indiana, Zorrie drifts westward. She survives on odd jobs, sleeping in barns and under the stars, before finding work at a radium processing plant. But when Indiana calls Zorrie home, she finally finds the love and community that have eluded her in and around the small town of Hillisburg. And yet, even as she tries to build a new life, she discovers that her trials have only begun.
