Literary Cocktail Hour - The Rabbit Hutch - Tess Gunty

Tess Gunty discusses her National Book Award winning novel, The Rabbit Hutch.

Set over one sweltering week in July, this is a compelling story of a group of residents in a low-cost housing complex. A woman waging a solo campaign against rodents. An online obituary writer. A young mother with a dark secret. Neighbors, separated only by the thin walls of a low-cost housing complex. Welcome to the Rabbit Hutch, located in the once bustling Midwestern industrial center of Vacca Vale, Indiana.

"The Rabbit Hutch" is a beautiful and funny snapshot of contemporary America, a tale of loneliness and longing, entrapment and, ultimately, freedom. Tess is in conversation with Vermont author Robin MacArthur. Tess Gunty earned an MFA in creative writing from NYU, where she was a Lillian Vernon Fellow. Her debut novel, The Rabbit Hutch, won the 2022 National Book Award. Her work has appeared in The Iowa Review, Joyland, Los Angeles Review of Books, No Tokens, Flash, and elsewhere. She was raised in South Bend, Indiana, and lives in Los Angeles.

Robin MacArthur lives and works on the farm where she was born in Vermont. She is the author of Half Wild: Stories (winner of the 2017 PEN/New England Award), the novel Heart Spring Mountain, and one-half of the indie-folk duo Red Heart the Ticker.