Wendy Northcutt

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Wendy Northcutt (b. September 17, 1963) is the editor of Darwinawards.com website and author of several books on the Darwin Awards. She is not, as is often thought, the originator of the awards.

According to the short biographies in her books and on her website, Northcutt studied, but did not complete a degree, in video game design at Devry University, worked in a neuroscience research lab at Stanford as a test subject, and later worked as an assistant at a now-defunct biotech startup developing cancer and diabetes therapeutics.

[edit] Interviews

In an interview with the San Jose Mercury, Emmons states that "...Northcutt considers herself a potential Darwin candidate. She describes herself as a klutz."

When interviewed by Salon she said "If there are multiple stupidity genes, then having one or two might make someone creative, while having a dozen would make her a dangerous idiot."

In an interview with a blogger at UK hosting company 123-reg[7], Wendy confirmed that running the Darwin Awards website now takes up all of her time. She said, “I always feel like I’m neglecting my audience, even though I work more than full time.” She also talked about how the Darwin Awards attempted to make the transition from being an online publication to being an offline one. The interview mentions that "of the handful of small obscure publishers that were interested in her books, only the smallest vanity presses would offer her a deal if she did not agree to remove the printed stories from the internet."

[edit] References:

CNN^[1], Salon.com^[2], Jeep van Carr^[3], the j.ello report^[4], the Spokane Spokesman-Review^[5], the SJ Mercury News^[6], and the 123-reg blog ^[7] .