Submitted by Timberland Regional Library
Award winning author Lidia Yuknavitch (“The Chronology of Water”) will be at the Olympia Timberland Library on Thursday, December 6 from 7:30 to 8:45 p.m. to read from and talk about her new novel, “Dora: A Head Case.”
Yuknavitch calls her novel, which includes an introduction by author Chuck Palahniuk, “My love letter to nerds, misfits, introverts, and arthearts everywhere.” “Dora” is a contemporary coming of age story based on Freud’s famous case study of a young woman who would lose her voice when challenged by sexual threat and emotion. Yuknavitch tells the story from Dora’s point of view.
When Ida, whose alter ego from childhood is Dora the Explorer, is sent to a Seattle psychiatrist by her philandering father, she nicknames her new shrink Siggy and Sig. Ida/Dora faints or loses her voice when faced with intimacy and intense emotion. Turning the tables on Siggy’s “head games,” she secretly records and films him with the intention of making an experimental art film in which he figures. When a rough cut of the film goes viral, media agents try to hunt her down for the material.
Yuknavitch is the author of three works of short fiction as well as a book of literary criticism, “Allegories of Violence.” Her approach to tough themes—sex, addiction, and abuse—is fearless. Her stories and essays have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Her story “Real to Reel” was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Her memoir, “Chronology of Water,” won the Oregon Book Award Readers Choice Award and a 2012 Pacific Northwest Bookseller Association Award. Yuknavitch teaches writing, literature, film and Women’s Studies in Oregon. Dora is her first novel. Her website is www.lidiayuknavitch.net.
The Olympia Timberland Library is located at 313 8th Avenue SE, Olympia. For more information, contact the library at (360) 352-0595 or visit www.TRL.org.
