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Lidia Yuknavitch

Biography

Lidia Yuknavitch

Lidia Yuknavitch is the nationally bestselling author of the novels THE BOOK OF JOAN, THE SMALL BACKS OF CHILDREN and DORA: A Headcase, and of the memoir THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER. She is the recipient of two Oregon Book Awards and has been a finalist for the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize and the PEN Center USA Creative Nonfiction Award. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Lidia Yuknavitch

Books by Lidia Yuknavitch

by Lidia Yuknavitch - Memoir, Nonfiction

Drawing on her background -- her father's abuse, her complicated dynamic with her disabled mother, the death of her child, her sexual relationships with men and women -- and her creative life as an author and teacher, Yuknavitch has come to understand that by using the power of literature and storytelling to reframe her memories, she can loosen the bonds that have enslaved her emotional growth. Armed with this insight, she allows herself to look with the eye of an artist at the wounds she suffered and come to understand the transformational power this has to restore her soul. By turns candid and lyrical, stoic and forgiving, blunt and evocative, READING THE WAVES reframes memory to show how crucial this process can be to gaining a deeper understanding of ourselves.

by Lidia Yuknavitch - Dystopian, Fiction

LaisvÄ— is a motherless girl from the late 21st century who is learning her power as a carrier, a person who can harness the power of meaningful objects to carry her through time. Sifting through the detritus of a fallen city known as the Brook, she discovers a talisman that will mysteriously connect her with a series of characters from the past two centuries: a French sculptor, a woman of the American underworld, a dictator's daughter, an accused murderer, and a squad of laborers at work on a national monument. Through intricately braided storylines, LaisvÄ— must dodge enforcement raids and find her way to the present day, and then, finally, to the early days of her imperfect country, to forge a connection that might save their lives --- and their shared dream of freedom.

by Lidia Yuknavitch - Fiction, Short Stories

Lidia Yuknavitch is a writer of rare insight into the jagged boundaries between pain and survival. Her characters are scarred by the unchecked hungers of others and themselves, yet determined to find salvation within lives that can feel beyond their control. In novels such as THE SMALL BACKS OF CHILDREN and THE BOOK OF JOAN, she has captivated readers with stories of visceral power. Now, she offers a shard-sharp mosaic portrait of human resilience on the margins. The landscape of VERGE is peopled with characters who are innocent and imperfect, wise and endangered: an eight-year-old black-market medical courier, a restless lover haunted by memories of his mother, a teenage girl gazing out her attic window at a nearby prison, all of them wounded but grasping toward transcendence.

by Lidia Yuknavitch - Fiction

In a war-torn village in Eastern Europe, an American photographer captures a young girl flying toward the lens, fleeing a fiery explosion that has engulfed her home and family. The image becomes the subject of obsession for one writer, the photographer’s best friend, who has suffered a devastating tragedy of her own. As the writer plunges into a suicidal depression, her filmmaker husband enlists several friends to save her by rescuing the unknown girl and bringing her to the US. Yet, as their plot unfolds, everything we know about the story comes into question.