Novelist, memoirist, and Corporeal Writing founder Lidia Yuknavitch on writing from the body, finding form in the natural world, and why the stories we need most come from the places we’ve been afraid to go.

We discuss:

Why the element that makes you vibrate — water, forest, rock, wind — might be the key to unlocking your creative access path.
How to find your core metaphors through a body-based meditation practice.
A practical portal for memoir writers.
Why abandoning linear plot doesn’t mean abandoning form.
The difference between prompts and portals.
Why writers who’ve survived the hardest things carry a skillset the rest of the world urgently needs right now.
A reframe for anyone afraid of writing badly.

Resources & Links

About

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 adapted for film directed by Kristen Stewart. Her newest memoir, Reading the Waves, was published by Riverhead books in 2025. 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.

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