Vox Hunt: Writing - My Favorite Writer

Sep 5, 2007 at 11:28 AM
2 comments

Show us your favorite writer.

My favorite writer is and has been Aimee Bender ever since I picked up her novel An Invisible Sign of my Own during my senior year of high school. It touched me in a way no book really has since. It's about a girl, Mona, who is nineteen and slightly out of touch with reality. The main part that got me was that her father in the book is ill, and my dad had just been hospitalized with pulmonary embolism (blood clots in his lungs) and I was terrified. The book helped me encounter those fears.

An Invisible Sign of My Own: A Novel

Aimee Bender

In college I managed to find Bender's email by searching the directory of the university where she teaches. I told her that I felt like her novel had been written with me in mind. She wrote back saying that in a way it was, because she'd hoped, when writing it, that it would mean to someone what it meant to me.

Aimee Bender has also written two fascinating books of short stories, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt and Willful Creatures.