Lidia Yuknavitch

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Lidia Yuknavitch (born June 18, 1963) is an American writer, teacher and editor based in Oregon. She is the author of the memoir The Chronology of Water, and the novels The Small Backs of Children, Dora: A Headcase, and The Book of Joan. She is also known for her TED talk "The Beauty of Being a Misfit", which has been viewed over 2.5 million times, and her followup book The Misfit's Manifesto.

Video Lidia Yuknavitch

Biography

Yuknavitch grew up in a home where her father verbally, physically, and sexually abused her and her sister, while her alcoholic mother did not intervene. As a teen, she was noticed by a "caring and methodical coach" who helped her move towards her dream of becoming a competitive swimmer. The family moved to Florida for additional training, and Yuknavitch began abusing alcohol. Yuknavitch attended college in Texas on a swimming scholarship and had hopes of qualifying for the United States Olympic swimming team. The boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, however, as well as her own drug and alcohol abuse, ended her competitive swimming career. Yuknavitch moved to Eugene, Oregon after losing her scholarship and enrolled in the University of Oregon.

She was one of the editors of Two Girls Review, which later became 2 Gyrlz Performative Arts.

She received her PhD in English Literature from the University of Oregon. Yuknavitch teaches writing, literature, film, and women's studies and is on the MFA faculty at Eastern Oregon University. She has also taught at Mt. Hood Community College.

Yuknavitch has been married to men three times, and has also had relationships with women, including Kathy Acker.

She lives in Portland, Oregon with the filmmaker Andy Mingo and their son, Miles. Mingo and Yuknavitch are the editors of Chiasmus Press, a "micro indie press".

Maps Lidia Yuknavitch

Writing

In 1987-1988, Yuknavitch, then known as Lidia Yukman, collaborated with a novel-writing class at the University of Oregon taught by Ken Kesey that produced the book Caverns. Although the group of novelists, collectively named "O. U. Levon", are often described as graduate students, Yuknavitch was not actually in graduate school at the time.

Her work has been published in Guernica, Ms., The Iowa Review, Zyzzyva, Another Chicago Magazine, PLAZM, The Sun, Exquisite Corpse, and TANK.

Yuknavitch is associated with fellow Oregon writers Chuck Palahniuk, who wrote the introduction to her novel Dora: A Headcase, Chelsea Cain, who wrote the introduction to The Chronology of Water, Monica Drake, Cheryl Strayed, and Tom Spanbauer. Yuknavitch introduced Spanbauer at the launch for his book I Loved You More at Powell's Books in Portland.

Yuknavitch's 2011 memoir, The Chronology of Water, has developed a cult following, and it was noted in a Huffington Post book review that two years after being published, the book "keeps popping up on blogs and social media feeds". She said she started writing the book as a kind of dare after talking to Chuck Palahniuk about memoir at the end of a meeting of their writers' group. The title comes from a short story Yuknavitch wrote in a writing workshop with Diana Abu-Jaber. The photograph on the book jacket depicts a naked woman in the water. Yuknavitch and her publisher opted to wrap the book in a "belly band" in order to cover the woman's breast. Yuknavitch wrote about this decision in The Rumpus.

Dora: A Headcase, is Yuknavitch's novel about "Dora", the subject of a famous case study by Sigmund Freud. The subject of the study had lost her voice. Yuknavitch wrote that she wanted to "give Dora back her voice and 'talk back' to Freud." In 2014, the book was optioned for a movie by Katherine Brooks.

The Small Backs of Children, published in 2015, was praised by Kirkus Reviews, in which it was called a "brave and affecting novel."

The misfit's journey: Lidia Yuknavitch shares her story at TED2016 ...

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Works

The Misfit's Manifesto. TED Books. 2017. ISBN 978-1-5011-2006-0.
The Book of Joan. Harper. 2017. ISBN 9780062383273.
The Small Backs of Children. Harper. 2015. ISBN 9780062383242.
Dora: A Headcase. Hawthorne Books. 2012. ISBN 978-0-9838504-7-2.
The Chronology of Water. Hawthorne Books. 2011. ISBN 978-0-9833049-0-6.
Real to Reel. Fiction Collective 2. 2003. ISBN 978-1-57366-107-2.
Allegories of Violence. Routledge. 2000. ISBN 978-1-136-70713-1.
Liberty's Excess: Fictions. Fiction Collective 2. 2000. ISBN 978-1-57366-084-6.
Her Other Mouths. House of Bones Press. 1997. ISBN 9780965666503.
Caverns. Penguin Books. 1990.