Showing results by author "Aimee Bender" in All Categories

On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents' attention, bites into her mother's homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother's emotions in the cake. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother - her cheerful, good-with-crafts, can-do mother - tastes of despair and desperation.

On the night her mother is taken to a mental hospital after a psychotic episode, eight year-old Francie is staying with her babysitter. Next to the couch on which she’s sleeping, there is a lamp that catches her eye, its shade adorned with butterflies. When she wakes, Francie sees a dead butterfly floating in a glass of water. She drinks it before the babysitter can see.   

The award winning series of classic and contemporary fiction returns with a collection of darkly funny short stories by the likes of Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Aimee Bender, A.M. Homes, Nathan Englander, Kim, Addonizio, and George Saunders. Readers include Anjelica Huston, Neil Gaiman, Michael Imperioli, Harris Yulin, Christina Pickles, Jefferson Mays, and Christine Ebersole.

We are being watched. That this statement no longer shocks is itself shocking. Post-Snowden, we know that the government - everywhere - has been reading our emails, listening to our phone calls, and watching whatever we do on the Internet. The only thing concealed is the nature of our watchers. In Watchlist, some of today's most prominent and promising fiction writers from around the globe respond to, reflect on, and mine for inspiration the surveillance culture in which we live.

WordTheatre, the short story experts, casts the perfect actors to bring great contemporary writing to life. Recorded live with the authors present, these nine exquisitely crafted stories explore the emotional complications of this thing called love. From the intoxication of a first crush to the devastation of a broken heart, take a journey through the anguish and ecstasy of human emotions.

Electric Literature Aloud! is a compendium of 10 short stories from the anthology series. The editors select stories with a strong voice that capture readers and listeners and lead them somewhere exciting, unexpected, and meaningful.

WordTheatre, the short story experts, casts the perfect actors to bring great contemporary writing to life. Recorded live with many of the writers present, these nine exquisitely crafted stories navigate fragile yet defining moments of transformation that inform us at every age. Perhaps a time or a place, a friend or relative, those memories that leaves an indelible mark, spark the imaginations of these wonderful authors.

The author of An Invisible Sign of My Own, whose work has been presented at Selected Shorts performances, discusses her second novel, a lush and moving story of a girl whose magical gift is really a devastating curse. She is interviewed by Heidi Julavits (novelist and co-editor of The Believer). A selection is performed by Lillo Way.