- Aimee Bender
Aimee Bender (born
June 28 ,1969 ) is an Americannovelist and short story writer, known for her surreal plots and characters.Biography
Bender received her undergraduate degree from the
University of California at San Diego , and aMaster of Fine Arts from the distinguished creative writing MFA program atUniversity of California at Irvine . While at UCI she studied withJudith Grossman andGeoffrey Wolff . She currently teaches creative writing at theUniversity of Southern California and heads a class in surrealist writing at the UCLA Extension Writers' Program. She has namedOscar Wilde ,Hans Christian Andersen ,the Brothers Grimm andAnne Sexton as influences on her writing. A native of Los Angeles, Bender is a close friend of fellow UCI alumniAlice Sebold .Her first book was "The Girl in the Flammable Skirt", a collection of short stories published in 1998. The book was chosen as a
New York Times Notable Book of 1998 and spent seven weeks on theLos Angeles Times bestseller list. Her novel "An Invisible Sign of My Own" was published in 2000, and was named as an L.A. Times pick of the year. In 2005 she published another collection of short stories, "Willful Creatures", which was nominated by The Believer magazine as one of the best books of the year.Bender has received two
Pushcart Prize s, and was nominated for theJames Tiptree, Jr. Award in 2005.Bibliography
*The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998) ISBN 0385492162
*An Invisible Sign of My Own (2001) ISBN 0385492243
*Willful Creatures (2005) ISBN 0385720971Bender's works have also been published in Granta, GQ, Harper's, Tin House, McSweeney's, The Paris Review, and several anthologies. She has also been heard on This American Life and Selected Shorts. [ [http://www.flammableskirt.com/biography.html Aimee Bender's Website ] ]
References
External links
* [http://www.flammableskirt.com/ Aimee Bender website]
* [http://today.uci.edu/Features/profile_detail.asp?key=32 UCI Profile]
* [http://www.artboy.info/strange/listen.html#Lagrange01 "Corporeal Reality"] radio conversation between Aimee Bender and Museum of Jurassic Technology curator David Wilson
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