The Most Difficult Story I Ever Wrote

The story “Foxes,” from my collection , took me more than a dozen years to write. It was the last story I turned in to my editor at Vintage in 2018, though it was the very first one I started, back in my first semester of Columbia’s MFA fiction program in 2005. In those days, the story was called, “The Teeth,” and later, “The Tent,” and later still, “Foxes Know How Near the Hunters.” Some components have remained the same across every iteration: a troubled child brings their troubled mother into a living room tent they’ve fashioned from barstools, sheets, and blankets. The child