Faith Hunter: Fabulously Creative Urban Fantasy With a "Real" Twist!

Have you ever sat down to read a book someone suggested to you with no idea what to expect?  Then, in no time at all, become so totally addicted you end up devouring every single book that author writes?   Well, this was my experience with Faith Hunter.  It only took the first Jane Yellowrock story to convince me that this was an author for the ages.  Faith’s writing is so smart, so creative and yet so totally addictive that it immediately makes a reader want to learn more. Upon sitting down and chatting with Faith, I found her to be everything her books are!  Extremely intelligent, very well spoken, amazingly fun to visit with (she has a seriously fabulous dry wit) all wrapped up in a gracious and kind southern lady!

InD: You were born in Louisiana, but you were raised all over the South. How did that happen?
FH:
My dad worked for International Paper Company. Back then, they had paper plants all over the South, providing the paper for things like newspapers. The Company sent people to each mill, and for at least eight months, they stayed in that town. Then, they would move to another town, until they learned enough about all of the mills, then they would move them up in the company.
InD: That much moving must've been hard for a child.
FH:
Well, by the time I was old enough to worry about it, my father had moved up enough that we were living four years in one place. From the time I was four to the time I was eight, we were in Mobile, Alabama. Before that, it was all over Louisiana, Mississippi, and after that, we moved to South Carolina, where I finished growing up.
InD: Were you a big reader?
FH:
I wasn't. I didn't really care for reading until the 5th grade when my teacher told my mother I couldn’t read aloud well. I read okay silently, and I understood most of what was going on, but I did not read aloud well, so they told me to get the funniest book I could find at the school library, take it home and read it aloud to my mother. By the third day, I had finished that book and opened another one and two days later, I had finished that one. Then I moved from funny books to dinosaurs and dragons. Being forced to read out loud did it for me.
InD: I wonder why.
FH:
I don't know, but it never grabbed me until then.
InD: Did you like to write?
FH:
No, not until the 10th grade.
InD: What changed in the 10th grade?
FH:
English became easier to me than the sciences and math, despite the fact that I ended up spending 40 years in laboratory medicine! I was able to get the writing assignments done quickly. I had so much fun in my creative writing and English classes, even my research papers. I enjoyed it so much, I was always ahead of deadlines. We would have two weeks to do an assignment and I would have it done the next day. In the 10th grade, a creative writing English teacher, named Carol Kohler, sat me down at a teacher student conference and said, “You are so talented as a writer, you should make this your career.” Many years later—with the invention of the internet—I tracked her down and told her I was so very grateful for everything she had done for me.
InD: I think it would be so wonderful as a teacher to have a student come back to let you know you had done something well. I can't imagine her reaction being anything but wonderful.
FH:
She was thrilled, and we stayed in touch until she retired.
InD: Did she remember you immediately?
FH:
Yeah, she did. Which was sort of surprising, but my guess is she had to go back and pull the annual beforehand because this was around 25 years after I graduated.

Read the entire interview in the October 2019 issue of InD'Tale magazine.

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