Josephy Center Hosts Author Lidia Yunknavitch

As part of Women’s Art: Women’s Vision, the Josephy Center for Arts and Culture welcomes ground-breaking author Lidia Yunkavitch for a reading and discussion on Friday, March 7, 2014 at 7:00 pm.
            “Lidia reads and teaches with passion, boldness, and humor. Her dynamic presence carries her audience onto a rollercoaster ride of emotion and experience,” said Amy Zahm, JCAC Development Director.
            Her memoir, Chronology of Water, explores the fluid evolution of her life from tragedy and chaos toward redemption and grace.
            From Chronology of Water: “So yes I know how angry, or naive, or self-destructive, or messed up, or even deluded I sound weaving my way through these life stories at times. But beautiful things. Graceful things. Hopeful things can sometimes appear in dark places. Besides, I'm trying to tell you the truth of a woman like me.”
            Vanessa Nix Anthony of Portland Woman Magazine said, "Chronology is about the resiliency of the human heart and its ability to piece itself back together, over and over."
        Lidia’s most recent book, 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. Dora was recently optioned for film by Katherine Brooks of Big Easy Pictures.
            In addition to Chronology and Dora, Lidia is also the author of three works of short fiction: Her Other Mouths, Liberty’s Excess, and Real to Reel, as well as a book of literary criticism, Allegories of Violence. Her work has appeared in Ms., The Iowa Review, Exquisite Corpse, Another Chicago Magazine, Fiction International, Zyzzyva, and elsewhere.
            Her book Real to Reel was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award and she is the recipient of awards and fellowships from Poets and Writers and Literary Arts, Inc. The Chronology of Water won the Oregon Book Award Reader’s Choice 2012 and the PNBA Award 2012.
            Her work appears in the anthologies Life As We Show It, Forms At War, Wreckage of Reason. She teaches writing, literature, film, and women’s studies in Oregon.
            Lidia’s presence at the Josephy Center is made possible by a generous grant from the Oregon Arts Commission.