Lidia Yuknavitch

Allegories of Violence demilitarizes the concept of war and asks what would happen if we understood war as discursive via late 20th Century novels of war.

Ida needs a shrink; or so her philandering father thinks, and he sends her to a Seattle psychiatrist. Immediately wise to the head games of her new shrink, who she nicknames Siggy or Sig, Ida begins a coming-of-age journey. At the beginning of her therapy Ida, whose alter ego is Dora, and her small posse of pals-Little Teena, Ave Maria, and Obsidian-engage in what they call "art attacks" for teen fun and mayhem. Ida has a secret: she is in love with Obsidian. What's more, whenever she gets close to intimacy or the crisis of deep emotions, Ida faints or loses her voice. Ida and her friends hatch a plan to secretly record and film Siggy and Ida intends to make an experimental art film in which he figures. Sig becomes the target of her teen rage and angst, but something goes terribly wrong at a crucial moment of filming Siggy at a nearby hospital when Ida finds her father in the emergency room having suffered an acute heart attack. Ida loses her voice and experiences more trauma-a rough cut of her experimental film has gone underground viral and unethical media agents are trying to hunt her down to buy the material. A chase ensues in which everyone wants what Ida's got. Dora: A Headcase is a contemporary coming-of-age story based on Freud's famous case study-retold and revamped through Dora's point of view, with shotgun blasts of dark humor and sexual play. It's a ballsy book. Some have called it the femaleFight Club.

This is not your mother's memoir. In "The Chronology of Water, " Lidia Yuknavitch expertly moves the reader through issues of gender, sexuality, violence, and the family from the point of view of a lifelong swimmer turned artist. In writing that explores the nature of memoir itself, her story traces the effect of extreme grief on a young woman's developing sexuality that some define as untraditional because of her attraction to both men and women. Her emergence as a writer evolves at the same time and takes the narrator on a journey of addiction, self-destruction, and ultimately survival that finally comes in the shape of love and motherhood. Lidia Yuknavitch is the National Bestselling author of four novels: Thrust, The Book of Joan, Dora: A Headcase, and The Small Backs of Children, winner of the 2016 Oregon Book Awards Ken Kesey Award for Fiction as well as the OBA Reader's Choice Award. She has also published a critical book on war and narrative, Allegories Of Violence (Routledge). The Misfit's Manifesto, a book based on her recent TED Talk, was published by TED Books in 2017. Verge, a collection of short fiction, was released in 2020. Her widely acclaimed memoir The Chronology of Water was a finalist for a PEN Center USA award for creative nonfiction and winner of a PNBA Award and the Oregon Book Award Reader's Choice. Her newest memoir, Reading the Waves, was published by Riverhead books in 2025. She has also had writing appear in publications including Guernica Magazine, Ms., The Iowa Review, Zyzzyva, Another Chicago Magazine, The Sun, Exquisite Corpse, TANK, and in the anthologies Life As We Show It (City Lights), Wreckage of Reason (Spuytin Duyvil), Forms at War (FC2), Feminaissance (Les Figues Press), and Representing Bisexualities (SUNY), as well as online at The Rumpus. She founded the workshop series Corporeal Writing in Portland Oregon, where she teaches both in person and online. She received her doctorate in Literature from the University of Oregon. She is a very good swimmer.

Fiction. WRECKAGE OF REASON incorporates the work of 39 contemporary women writers who are pushing the boundaries of fiction. In this diverse and comprehensive volume, the writers have manipulated traditional ways of storytelling, language, and plot, to express new and distinct ways of seeing and experiencing the world. Narrative form is subverted, provocative subject matter explored, and language takes on a scatological form to depict an authentic human experience that makes reading a truly participatory act. At the conclusion of each work, the contributor has composed a few impressions sharing what inspired her to tell that particular story. The writers include Lidia Yuknavitch, LilyGrace, Laurie Foos, Kass Fleisher, Barbara Baer, Cynthia Reeves, Lauren Schiffman, Karen Lillis, Megan Milks, Lyn Halper, Fanny Howe, Suki Wessling, Jessica Treat, Shelley Jackson, Laynie Browne, Roni Natov, Cris Mazza, Elizabeth Block, Geri DeLuca, Alicita Rodriguez, Gwen Hart, Masha Tupitsyn, Martha King, Sarah White, Nina Shope, Carmen Firan, Rosebud Ben-Oni, Anna Mockler, Sandra Miller, E. C. Bachner, Tsipi Keller, Summer Brenner, Amina Cain, Karen Brennan, Aimee Parkison, Lily Hoang, Lynda Schor, Danielle Dutton, Danielle Alexander, Debra Di Blasi, and Alexandra Chasin.

Allegories of Violence demilitarizes the concept of war and asks what would happen if we understood war as discursive via late 20th Century novels of war.