On today's episode, we welcome back Lidia Yuknavitch, author of the new memoir Reading the Waves from Riverhead Books. Lidia’s the nationally bestselling author of the novels Thrust, The Book of Joan, Dora: A Headcase, and The Small Backs of Children, which won the 2016 Oregon Book Awards Ken Kesey Award for Fiction as well as the OBA Reader's Choice Award. Her work includes the non-fiction book The Misfit’s Manifesto and the memoir The Chronology of Water, which was just adapted for the big screen by Kristen Stewart. In addition to the two Oregon Book Awards, Lidia was a finalist for the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize and the PEN Center USA Creative Nonfiction Award. Her TED Talk – “The Beauty of Being a Misfit” – currently has over 4 million views. Lidia founded the workshop series Corporeal Writing here in Portland, where she teaches both in person and online.
The San Francisco Chronicle calls Reading the Waves “a mighty mishmash of a memoir. Joy, sorrow, rage, fear, guilt, lust, adoration — it’s all there in equal parts. The book empowers us to consider: when we look back at our pasts, how comfortable are we with seeing who we really were and embracing that version of ourself, however flawed? Perhaps more importantly, how do we shed the parts of us we no longer find useful, to become something new?”
Author photo courtesy of Miles Mingo