Novelist spins tales

By Michelle L. Young
Daily Forty-Niner

An audience of close to 50 people listened intensely Thursday night to short-story writer and novelist Aimee Bender's tales about the institutions of family, feelings of love, childhood and identity.

Solemnly standing behind a podium, Bender invoked bewilderment and laughter from the crowd as she calmly read the prologue and a shortened version of the first chapter to her novel "An Invisible Sign of my Own" in the Faculty Development Center.

Bender's writing creates "experiences all humans endure such as desire, forgiveness, love, loneliness and how they transform us," said Stephen Cooper, an English and film professor and this year's creative writing coordinator.

Bender, whose previous works include her short story collection "The Girl in the Flammable Skirt," has a "luminous style all her own," Cooper added.

A native of Los Angeles, Bender said she was influenced greatly by her father, a psychiatrist who specialized in psychoanalysis, and her mother, a choreographer, as well as her influential Los Angeles surroundings.

Her characters are about "feeling their feelings as [they] have them and there are a bouquet of ways to show them," Bender said.

And while parts of her are relevant to the characters, she said, it is more in thought that there is a connection.

"That's the nice thing about fiction writing," said Bender, emphasizing the characters are not her, but in a sense pieces of her or a thought she had. She agreed that her writing and characters are "surreal."

"I think she is hilarious and her style is so real it amazes me," said Cassandra Hearn, a senior majoring in English.

Jason Grahm, a second-year graduate student in creative writing, said: "Her work is highly metaphoric and I don't know what to think of it sometimes. She can be very distant and the metaphors don't always add up in a warming way. There is something attached that middle aged women can relate to, which is strange because I think her books are really difficult. She definitely has created her own genre."