Author: Aimee Bender

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Still missing. A conspiracy theorist has been enlisted to account for his disappearance.

Subjects Discussed: Attention to precision, Flann O’Brien, strange logic, Monty Python, first-person voice, Steve Erickson and The Black Clock, Jeffrey Eugenides, multiple personality disorder, grading papers, publishing short stories with dirty titles in literary journals, Prince, George Carlin’s seven words, sexual perversion, Mary Gaitskill, storming the gates of GQ, quotation marks, the visual quality of words, SAT words, the thematic components of three parts, literary Darwinism, evolutionary biology, playing God, setting limits, genetically based aesthetics, imagination vs. “hysterical realism,” verisimilitude, Robert Coover, mathematics, permission, fonts, and the short story vs. the novel.

[SPECIAL NOTE: Because of one particular story in Willful Creatures, this podcast proved so unexpectedly raunchy that a swivel chair was actually damaged during the course of mixing this podcast. We fully understand the sentimental value that some people have for their swivel chairs. So, if you are playing this podcast in a work environment, you have been warned.]