• Gabriel García Márquez is the preeminent practitioner of magical realism, the genre with which Aimee Bender’s work is often associated. Márquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) is considered to be one of his finest works.
• Angela Carter is another well-known magical realist. Bender cites “The Company of Wolves,” a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, as one of her favorite Carter stories. This story can be found in the collection, The Bloody Chamber (1979), which includes Carter’s unique take on several other fairy tales.
• Bender cites Transformations (1971), by poet Anne Sexton, as an early influence. Sexton retells familiar fairy tales such as Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood; Sexton’s versions are dark, twisted, and sometimes humorous.
• Bender’s first novel, An Invisible Sign of My Own (2000), tells the story of twenty-year-old Mona.....
