Wendy Northcutt

Wendy Northcutt (born September 17, 1963) is an author of a series of books on the Darwin Awards and the creator of the DarwinAwards.com website.

Education
According to the short biographies in her books and on her website, Northcutt completed a degree in molecular biology at Berkeley, worked in a neuroscience research lab at Stanford, and later managed the protein purification group at a biotech startup developing cancer and diabetes therapeutics.

Interviews
Northcutt was interviewed by Mark Emmons of the San Jose Mercury News. Emmons states that "Northcutt considers herself a potential Darwin Award candidate. She describes herself as a klutz."

When interviewed by Salon.com 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, Wendy said that running the Darwin Awards website 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 successfully made the transition from being an online publication to being an offline one. The interview mentions that publishers asked her to "remove the stories from the internet. But Wendy was adamant: 'It was a community! I could not do that. Even though it might have cost me a lot of money, I kept saying no.'”

In a 2001 interview with CNN, Northcutt commented that "Before (the awards became popular), we were an insular community and we could make fun of people and those people (or their families) would never find out. But as it got bigger, I realized there was more and more danger of really hurting people." Therefore she treats the subjects of her stories with compassion, and suggests that those who read her books are likely to become more careful with explosives.

Northcutt has been interviewed by CNN, Salon.com, Jeep van Carr, the j.ello report, the Spokane Spokesman-Review, the San Jose Mercury News, and the 123-reg blog.

Books

 * 2000: The Darwin Awards: Evolution in Action, ISBN 0-525-94572-5 & ISBN 0-452-28344-2
 * 2001: The Darwin Awards II: Unnatural Selection, ISBN 0-525-94623-3 & ISBN 0-452-28401-5
 * 2003: The Darwin Awards III: Survival of the Fittest, ISBN 0-525-94773-6 & ISBN 0-452-28572-0
 * 2006: The Darwin Awards IV: Intelligent Design, ISBN 0-525-94960-7 & ISBN 978-0-525-94960-2
 * 2008: The Darwin Awards Next Evolution: Chlorinating the Gene Pool, ISBN 0-452-29563-7 & ISBN 0-452-29563-7
 * 2010: The Darwin Awards Countdown to Extinction, ISBN 0-525-95191-1& ISBN 978-0-452-29736-4