LIDIA YUKNAVITCH IS THE AUTHOR of the debut novel Dora: A Headcase (Hawthorne Books), and the memoir The Chronology of Water (Hawthorne Books), as well as three books of short fictions-Her Other Mouths, Liberty's Excess (FC2), and Real to Reel (FC2), and a critical book on war and narrative, Allegories of Violence (Routledge). Her writing has appeared in publications including 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 writes, teaches and lives in Portland, Oregon with the filmmaker Andy Mingo and their renaissance man son Miles. She is the recipient of the Oregon Book Award - Reader's Choice, a PNBA award, and was a finalist for the 2012 Pen Center creative nonfiction award. She is a very good swimmer.
King of the Armadillos (2023) Wendy Chin-Tanner "King of the Armadillos pulses with the miraculous: the power of art and heart to heal a body from the inside-out. Excavating a history that comes at an important moment in the present tense, the novel asks: how do we want to treat each other in the face of dangerous tensions around otherness and illness? Wendy Chin-Tanner answers with her art. A triumph."
Strega (2022) Johanne Lykke Holm "A work of mythic reinvention about the power of girls coming of age in a world hell bent on containing their passions and imaginations. . . . Strega left me breathless, angry, and then thrilled by the dare it leaves in the reader's lap."
Bad Fruit (2022) Ella King "Ella King opens up the fraught space between mother and daughter to reveal both the unbearable weight of inherited traumas as well as the uncontainable desire of a heart reaching for life. Bad Fruit cuts away the skin of a family as if a daughter could be a knife slicing through lies, pain, and fear. The heart hidden beneath all the secrets is sweet. The heart hidden beneath the secrets is hers. Breathtaking."
Vagabonds! (2022) Eloghosa Osunde "A triumph. In Vagabonds! you will discover... an explosive portrait of Nigeria that will blow your mind-in prose that feels so alive it practically vibrates off the page. A masterpiece."
After the Sun (2021) Jonas Eika "Jonas Eika blew the doors and windows of my imagination open, and now there is a galaxy in my head and a supernova in my heart. After the Sun vibrates with the aftershock of capitalism and reality flux. Its characters confront the world we've made as if they are facing off with ex-lovers who won't leave, caught at the instant before they will either flame on or flame out. Thrilling."
What Strange Paradise (2021) Omar El Akkad "What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad just resuscitated my heart. This novel—following a boy who survives a refugee passage, and a girl whose homeland feels fractured—dares to unite us on the shore of shared human experience, and redefines hope in the face of despair. I want to read this book every single day. I want to live in a world where the beauty of strangers is a heartsong."
Kink (2021) Garth Greenwell and R O Kwon "Bless Kink for opening up the spaces between all binaries, for daring to hold open desire between bodies on the brink of ecstasy. Between pleasure and pain, between hunger and thirst, between power and surrender, these stories will remind you how desire let loose can write us back to life. A pure erotic fury. An unapologetic delight brought to the cusp of trembling."
With or Without You (2020) Caroline Leavitt "Caroline Leavitt's new novel With or Without You seduced me instantly and held my heart from the first page to the last. Like Elena Ferrante's raw and intimate explorations into human relationships, this novel will make you laugh, cry, yell, and possibly more. At the heart of the story is the art of a woman's life, pulsing with beauty, desire, loss, never-ending change, and the grit it takes to keep going."
The Great Offshore Grounds (2020) Vanessa Veselka "I immediately fell in love with the phenomenal sisters at the heart of Vanessa Veselka's supernova of a new novel, The Great Offshore Grounds. This novel is thrilling in its content, daring in heart, and makes a helix between a novel of ideas and the best damn story of women who forge their identities on their own terms that I've read in years."
The Alehouse At the End of the World (2018) Stevan Allred "The Alehouse at the End of the World will take you on a fast-moving ride through sixteenth century farce with a present tense echo effect. Bard-like in its constellation of bird-gods and rough hewn characters tossed around like breadcrumbs, the epic voyage catches you between laughter and a tear forming at the edge of your eye. Like life does."
The Great Believers (2018) Rebecca Makkai "Rebecca Makkai's novel The Great Believers has stolen my heart. Crossing decades and lives, love and loss, art, and the long lasting legacy of AIDS, the novel is a brilliant triumph of empathy and intimacy between friends."
Any Man (2018) Amber Tamblyn "Get ready to hold your breath. Amber Tamblyn’s Any Man is a genre-bending gender-bending brilliant blow torch of a debut novel amplifying the complexities of sexual violence and the radical costs of survival. At the center of the novel is a serial rapist named Maude who reduces the men in her path to objects of prey. We’re not used to thinking of this equation, and that’s the point. This is the story of a monstrous woman made from the darkness inside all of us, a woman who meets patriarchy head-on and shreds it, leaving men traveling the journey that women must make every day of their lives--not the hero’s journey, but the victim’s. Not to emerge heroic and victorious, but to emerge from shame and violence with empathy, compassion, and the radical ability to endure together. This book changes everything."
The Night Child (2018) Anna Quinn "I loved this book.Quinn is hanging with the big dogs...like Jodi Picoult and Ann Patchett... Readers will love it."
Don't Skip Out on Me (2018) Willy Vlautin "No one anywhere writes as beautifully about people whose stories stay close to the dirt. Willy Vlautin is a secular—and thus real and profoundly useful—saint."
