Photography by Tyler Kelly, William wears suit by Freddy Hardie @ ROUGH FABRICS (@roughfabrics)

“I'm really interested in queer people being bad,” William Rayfet Hunter tells Man About Town. “Or at least nuanced.” It’s understandable, as it’s not that long since queer characters who found their way into mainstream cultural horizons were resigned to just one of a few avenues when it came to plot. Either beset by tragedy, confined to comedy or discarded after a torturous coming out story – depictions of multidimensional LGBTQIA+ lives, complete with mundanity or moral ambiguity were few and far between.

Thankfully, in recent years, the tides have somewhat turned. And Rayfet Hunter’s pulsating debut novel Sunstruck– winner of Stormzy-founded publishing imprint Merky Books’ New Writers’ Prize – proves a decisive symbol of progress on the literary front. The account of a romance between its sensitive, working-class Mancunian narrator and aloof but magnetic upper-crust charmer Felix Blake emerged on bookstands in May as a scorching summer pageturner exploring love, identity, race, class and what it really means to belong.

We’re first introduced to the ridiculously rich Blake family when the narrator arrives for a stay at the family’s South of France chateau. He’s friends with Felix’s sister Lily, after meeting at university, and so her invite to join the household over the summer holidays opens the door to an idyllic, sun-kissed picture, unfamiliar to his modest childhood with his grandmother Up North. Space, opulence, parties, access, Felix – life in their world is infatuating. It’s also riddled with red flags. However, untethering himself from the thrill, as readers can also attest to, proves easier said than done.

As one of Man About Town’s “Queer Creatives Shaping Culture” this Pride season, Rayfet Hunter talks the journey from inception to Sunstruck’s release, his dream Pride float, his love for Sean Baker’s Tangerine and the importance of painting a queer relationship with layers…

Hi William! Hypothetically, you have the opportunity to curate the Pride float of your dreams — what five individuals (living or deceased) are definitely coming with you?
Big Freedia because I think we'd get on and she'd pull the right crowd. Anne Boleyn because I think she deserves a treat. Mr Tumnus because I want to borrow the thigh-high goat boots. My ex from uni because he still has my hoodie and won't answer my texts. And James Baldwin because I want to pick his brain about my next novel.
 
Congratulations on being a published author! What’s been the most discombobulating moment in the month or so since release?
Thank you! Honestly, the whole process of a novel coming out is quite discombobulating. It is strange and wonderful to see a piece of work take flight into the world. In a way, it doesn't feel like it's mine anymore. It belongs to the readers and they get to build their own relationship with it, one that doesn't involve me. I find it incredibly strange that people are talking to me about the book and the characters. They'll come up to me at events and say things like, "Oh why do you think Felix did that?" and my first thought will be, "What the hell, how do you know who Felix is? I made him up.”
 
Can you give us an overview of what the Sunstruck journey has looked like, from inception to release?
Sunstruck started as a few scenes that came to me in fragments a few years ago. And then the character of Felix (the love interest/main antagonist of the novel) sprung into my mind fully formed. I knew I had to write about him and then the other characters and the story started to take shape. I jotted down a few thousand words and then hid it away deep in a folder on my laptop for ages. It wasn't until the submissions for the #Merky Books New Writers' Prize opened that I started to take it seriously. Then before I knew it, I'd been shortlisted and then found out that I'd won. Suddenly I was sat in front of my laptop thinking, “Oh damn, now I have to actually write this thing." It took about nine months and a lot of cajoling, hand-holding and waves of writer's block but I managed to submit a draft only a month and a week after my deadline, which I think is pretty good going. And then came the edits and publicity process which has been eye-opening, enjoyable and ever more exciting. I'm not from a literary background, this isn't my world, so everything feels very new and exciting but also somehow like it's all an illusion. We had a great launch event at BeauBeaus in Aldgate and I think that was the first time any of this actually felt real.
 
One of my favourite aspects of the book is how rich and true-to-life the everyday moments in the narrator and Felix’s relationship are. Whether enjoying their first pint together, disagreeing on when to leave an afters, the tension in their moments of intimacy or the arm over a shoulder when the other’s goaded by a family friend — it feels very real and familiar amidst the chaos. Are there other cultural representations of queer relationships that stand out to you for their nuance?
I think there has been a tendency in some forms of media to make queerness appear palatable to a wider audience and there's definitely a place for that. But I wanted to show both the mundanity and insanity that is the reality for all people, but especially queers. We are complex and rich and flawed and I think it's important to show that. I really love the frustrating and relatable miscommunication in Bryan Washington's wonderful novel, Memorial. It follows an interracial gay couple in the US whose relationship is put through a series of tests as their family responsibilities start to crowd into their already busy lives. The way the two characters don't say what they want and talk around everything but the essentials makes you want to scream at them through the pages. Tangerine, which came out in 2015 and was entirely shot using iPhone 5S, is another brilliant portrayal of queerness in all its flawed glory. It follows two trans sex workers as they go on the hunt for one of their exes through the streets of Hollywood on Christmas Eve. They are messy, violent, tender, funny, vulnerable and incredibly charismatic, as I think all interesting queer characters should be.
 
We see a diverse range of queer experiences portrayed, even just between the narrator, Felix and Dot. Can you tell us about the decision to reflect multiple identities? Did you look to anyone or anything to accurately depict experiences different from your own?
One of my favourite things about being queer is that it opens up this whole world of people who are different to you. I think when I was younger I wanted to find a type of identity that I could conform to within gay spaces and I do think there is pressure to do that to an extent. But for me, queerness is expansive, political and most importantly defies categorisation. Queerness, by definition, exists outside of legibility. What this means is that by embracing queerness as a social and political framework for living my life, I have had exposure to a wonderful, uncontainable, indescribable miasma of people and experiences. I hope I've reflected some of them in the novel but there is an infinite number more to explore. In terms of inspiration, I think it also helped to have dated some confusing, posh, white bisexuals. I took that part of my research very seriously.