Aimee Bender Biography

“It's no secret that much of fiction is thinly-veiled autobiography. If that was true of Aimee Bender's Willful Creatures, her second story collection, then Bender's siblings are potatoes, she once bought a tiny man in a cage, and she knows a boy whose fingers are shaped like keys”(The Short Review).

As it is demonstrated throughout Bender’s writings, she is not a traditional author. “Many of the stories do not have vegetables which grow limbs or boys with keys for fingers, but rather it is the style of writing that places them at the more surreal end of the spectrum. Words do not necessarily come in the traditional order, sentences are not always finished. There is a rhythm and a poetry here” (The Short Review).

Aimee Bender was born in California on June 28, 1969. She is the author of three books: Willful Creatures, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, and An Invisible Sign of My Own. She has received two Pushcart prizes and was previously nominated for the TipTree award. She lives in Los Angeles and admits that “There's a lot of daydreaming space in L.A., and in that way [she] think[s] that does help [her] work” (Author Interviews). Bender grew up in a family with two sisters. Her father was a psychiatrist and her mother, a choreographer. She expresses that her “dad, through psychiatry, is dealing with the unconscious . . . and [her] mom is delving into her own unconscious to make up dances. . . . And [she’s] sort of the combo platter” (The Rememberer). She teaches creative writing at The University of Southern California.

“On the surface, most of the stories in Willful Creatures shouldn't ring true at all. But think of a roller coaster: Bender's magical flourishes crank you up, up, up along the tracks until, suddenly, break-necking back toward reality, a single line tears your stomach out. The ride gets addictive—mundane and surreal, fantastic and familiar, one rush leaves you clamoring for the next” (Author Interviews).



Bender's Books:

As noted previously Aimee Bender is the author of three books. The three books she has written are The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998, An Invisible Sign of My Own (2000), and Willful Creatures (2005).

The Girl in the Flammable Skirt:
This was Bender's first book that was published in 1998 and is a collection of short stories (Personal). The stories in this book include topics such as, "A grief-stricken librarian decides to have sex with every man who enters her library. A half-mad, unbearably beautiful heiress follows a strange man home, seeking total sexual abandon: He only wants to watch game shows. A woman falls in love with a hunchback; when his deformity turns out to be a prosthesis, she leaves him. A wife whose husband has just returned from the war struggles with the heartrending question: Can she still love a man who has no lips?" (Powell). These stories are out of the ordinary and not very realistic but they do display some underlining themes within them. This book is the first of the three that Bender writes and sets the tone for what we can expect from her writings in the future. The Girl in the Flammable Skirt was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of 1998 and spent seven weeks on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list (Personal).

An Invisible Sign of My Own:
This was Bender's second book, a novel, that was published in 2000 and was named as an L.A. Times pick of the year (Personal). Unlike her previous book The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, An Invisible Sign of My Own is a novel instead of a collection of short stories. Bender has gotten praise for this novel as a "fresh voice in American fiction" (Powell) and this novel has an intriguing storyline. A synopsis of the novel is as follows, "Mona Gray was ten when her father contracted a mysterious illness and she became a quitter, abandoning each of her talents just as pleasure became intense. The only thing she can't stop doing is math: She knocks on wood, adds her steps, and multiplies people in the park against one another. When Mona begins teaching math to second-graders, she finds a ready audience. But the difficult and wonderful facts of life keep intruding. She finds herself drawn to the new science teacher, who has an unnerving way of seeing through her intricately built façade" (Powell). Bender's style of writing is what keeps her audience intrigued and her uniqueness is one of a kind.

Willfull Creatures:
Willfull Creatures is Bender's newest book and like her first book it's a collection of short stories. Willfull Creatures was published in 2005 and was nominated by The Believer as one of the best books of the year (Personal). Her third book has received as much praise as her first two books and Willfull Creatures does not disappoint Aimee Bender fans. As stated it is a collection of short stories and some elements of the book include, "A woman's children may be potatoes, but the love she feels for them is heartbreakingly real. A boy with keys as fingers is seen not as a freak but as a hero" (Powell). Bender uses, throughout her books, what can be termed as Absurdist Fiction where the author writes about fake worlds that aren't real and brings absurd situations into her stories.


Aimee Bender reads from Willful Creatures with Interview

Works Cited:

An Invisible Sign of My Own. Powell's Books. 26 Oct. 2008

<http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-0385492243-0>.

Authors@Google: Aimee Bender. Youtube. 25 Oct. 2008
<http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GcuKsL4L8Fo>.

Bender, Aimee. Flammableskirt.com. 26 Oct. 2008 <http://www.flammableskirt.com/menu.html>.

Hershman, Tania. The Short Review. 26 Oct. 2008
<http://www.theshortreview.com/reviews/AimeeBenderWilfulCreatures.htm>.

Random House Inc. 25 Oct. 2008 <www.randomhouse.com>.

The Girl in the Flammable Skirt. Powell's Books. 27 Oct. 2008
<http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-0385492162-5>.

The Rememberer. 27 Oct. 2008 <http://www.enotes.com/rememberer/biography>.

Weich, Dave. Author Interviews. Powell's Books. 26 Oct. 2008 <http://www.powells.com/authors/bender.html>.

Willful Creatures. Powell's Books. 26 Oct. 2008
<http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-0385720971-0>.

Posted by: Rachel Kohler, Charlene Winburn, and Chris Mechlem