Claire Fullerton

Award-winning author of four novels, including her latest, Little Tea

About Claire Fullerton

Claire Fullerton is the author of Little Tea, the five-time award winning Mourning Dove, Dancing to an Irish Reel, and A Portal in Time. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines, and her novella, Through an Autumn Window appears in the book, A Southern Season. She is represented by Julie Gwinn of the Seymour Literary Agency and lives in Malibu, California.

Read our review of Little Tea here.

 

BOOKS:

Little Tea (2020)

Mourning Dove (2018)

Dancing to an Irish Reel (2015)

A Portal in Time (2013)

Biggest literary influences:

Pat Conroy, Ron Rash, Donna Tartt, Anne Rivers Siddons

Last book read:

Crescendo by Allen Cheney and Julie Cantrell

The book that changed your life:

The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy. This sins-of-the-father family saga showed me the possibilities of first-person narration and how deep a writer can go with language, description and story.

Favorite literary character:

Shepherd Bondurant from Anne Rivers Siddons’s Peachtree Road. His aerial view of Atlanta’s gentry while being a member of the tribe was brilliant.

Currently working on:

I just finished the manuscript of a book titled The Insiders. I am currently promoting my book, Little Tea.

Words to live by:

“Mastering the ambiguity of life is the hardest task any of us will ever be called to do.” Finley, in Mourning Dove, said this line, and I wrote it because I live by it.

Advice for aspiring authors:

Be in it for the sheer joy of the pursuit. In writing, there is no “there” to get to. There is only the path, and it is as individual a path as there are individual writers.

REVIEWS:

There are currently 168 reviews of Mourning Dove on Amazon, which pleases me. They can be found here.

 

 

 

Testimonials

” "Clare Fullerton skillfully draws us into a lost world of Southern traditions and norms where past tragedies cast long, dark shadows on present-day lives, and no one ever truly escapes."
- —Cassandra King Conroy, New York Times bestselling author of The Sunday Wife and The Same Sweet Girls
” “Claire Fullerton once again delivers an emotional, lyrical tale and proves she’s a writer to watch.”
-  —Julie Cantrell, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Perennials
” "Style and substance are the two necessary ingredients any book must have. This book exemplifies both. I was charmed and delighted by the author’s descriptive abilities. Her use of language, metaphors, turns of phrase kept me turning each page. She can make a table sound interesting. I now know what it was like to be a Southern Belle. There’s a lot going on — more than meets the eye, which is why this is so engrossing. The reader is dropped into the life of the upper crust, replete with a big back story and complicated family life. What characters they are. Posey, the mother, is all about refinement and a survivor. Finley, the bother of narrator and protagonist Millie, is a compelling, complicated, charismatic enigma bearing a resemblance to Holden Caufield. Then there is the Colonel; let’s just say he doesn’t come across as a nice guy. There are other supporting characters and they all move the story along. I enjoyed reading every sentence, and some of them are downright extraordinary and wise. Claire Fullerton is a bright new star. I’ve read her last two books, and they are great, but this one is a masterpiece."
- —Neville Johnson on Mourning Dove