Lidia Yuknavitch
Design Matters with Debbie Millman
Design Matters Media
4.5 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 16 March 2026
⏱️ 81 minutes
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Summary
Lidia Yuknavitch is the bestselling author of The Chronology of Water, Reading the Waves, and The Big M, and a writer whose work blurs genre to explore themes of memory, embodiment, grief, and transformation. She joins to discuss her childhood, her early life as a competitive swimmer, the film adaptation of The Chronology of Water directed by Kristen Stewart, and how storytelling can reshape the narratives we carry.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm a good swimmer, and I mean that both in actual water and in the waters of art and writing. |
| 0:08.4 | And that means I can help other people, and that's a reason to stick around. |
| 0:15.3 | From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Milman. |
| 0:22.5 | On Design Matters, Debbie talks with some of the most creative people in the world about |
| 0:26.3 | what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they're thinking about and working on. |
| 0:31.7 | On this episode, a conversation with writer and artist Lydia Yuknovich about trauma, writing, sex, and the centrality of one's body. |
| 0:40.9 | To speak the body is an act of saving one's own life, I think. |
| 0:50.1 | Lydia Yuknovich is the best-selling author of books which have blurred boundaries and genres and refuse the safety of neat categories in favor of something more luminous. |
| 1:02.5 | Her 2011 memoir, The Chronology of Water, is now a contemporary classic and has recently been adapted into a feature film directed by Kristen Stewart. |
| 1:13.5 | The movie has extended this remarkable story and structure into an entirely new artistic medium. |
| 1:20.9 | Lydia's 2025 memoir, Reading the Waves, continues her inquiry into memory, embodiment, grief, and transformation, |
| 1:29.4 | and her latest book, The Big M, is an unflinching collection of essays reclaiming menopause |
| 1:35.8 | as a site of power, story, and freedom now. For decades, Lydia has been building a body |
| 1:42.8 | of work that asks what it means not just to survive a life, |
| 1:47.0 | but to redesign and remake it. Lydia Yukniewicz, welcome to Design Matters. |
| 1:52.2 | My complete pleasure. I'm really excited to be here. I am really excited you're here too. |
| 1:58.6 | Lydia, I understand. I recently learned that you're ambidextrous. |
| 2:03.1 | I am. I got my hand thwacked by nuns early on when I was young in Catholic school. So I learned to, |
| 2:11.7 | like most things in my life, I learned to kind of hide something that I was told was wrong with me. But as a person who's 62, I can do |
| 2:21.4 | whatever I want with my hands. So I do. Were they whacking you because you were using your left |
| 2:26.5 | hand and forcing you to use your right? Yes. Oh, interesting. So conceivably, you really are |
| 2:32.0 | a lefty, but you're also, do you write with the same ease, or do you depend on one hand more than another? |
... |
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