Lidia Yuknavitch is the nationally bestselling author of four novels: Thrust (Riverhead, 2022); The Book of Joan (Harper, 2017); The Small Backs of Children (Harper, 2015), winner of the 2016 Oregon Book Awards Ken Kesey Award for Fiction and the OBA Reader’s Choice Award; and Dora: A Headcase (Hawthorne Books, 2012). Her other works include Verge: Stories (Riverhead, 2020), a finalist for the Story Prize; The Misfit’s Manifesto (TED Books, 2017), based on her widely viewed TED Talk; and a critical book on war and narrative, Allegories of Violence (Routledge, 2001). Her widely acclaimed memoir The Chronology of Water (Hawthorne Books, 2011) 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. 

Her writing has appeared in many publications, including Guernica, Ms., The Iowa Review, Zyzzyva, Another Chicago Magazine, The Sun, Exquisite Corpse, and TANK, and in the anthologies Life As We Show It (City Lights), Wreckage of Reason (Spuyten Duyvil), Forms at War (FC2), Feminaissance (Les Figues Press), and Representing Bisexualities (SUNY), as well as online at The Rumpus. 

Yuknavitch 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.