Aimee Bender is the author of four books: The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998), which was a NY Times Notable Book; An Invisible Sign of My Own (2000), an L.A. Times pick of the year; Willful Creatures (2005), which was nominated by The Believer as one of the best books of the year; and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (2010), which recently won the SCIBA award for best fiction, and an Alex Award. Her short fiction has been published in Granta, GQ, Harper’s, Tin House, McSweeney’s, and The Paris Review, as well as heard on PRI’s This American Life and Selected Shorts. She has received two Pushcart prizes, and was nominated for the TipTree award in 2005, and the Shirley Jackson short story award in 2010.

Each quarter, the Living Writers Reading Series brings visiting authors and poets to UC Santa Cruz to give students an in-depth look into the world of the working writer.  Sponsored by Oakes College and the Porter Hitchcock Poetry Fund.