“You Can Do Anything” (new featured column)

News

I’m excited to share that I have been invited to write a monthly featured column at bestselling author Lidia Yuknavitch’s writing workshop site, Corporeal Writing. You Can Do Anything is my first piece, and you can read my column, Secret Circus, on the second Friday of each month. At a time when government secrets can be revealed in 140 characters and our nation loves a show, Secret Circus blends personal essay with political commentary.

“You Can Do Anything” Excerpt

Lowercase v-a-g-i. Capital N. Lowercase a.

“Can she read?” The policeman asks.

He asks it like I can’t hear, like I’m not right there, sitting on my father’s lap. I want to tell the policeman that there is no time in my memory when I could not read, that there was never a time when I couldn’t put the letters together and throw myself into any world offered to me and disappear, but I stay quiet.

“Yes, she can read,” my father answers.

The policeman slides the report across the kitchen table and hands me a pen.

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About Lidia Yuknavitch

Lidia Yuknavitch is the author of the national bestselling novel The Small Backs of Children, winner of the 2016 Oregon Book Award’s Ken Kesey Award for Fiction as well as the Reader’s Choice Award, the novel Dora: A Headcase, and three books of short stories. Her widely acclaimed memoir The Chronology of Water 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. She founded the workshop series Corporeal Writing in Portland, Oregon, where she also teaches women’s studies, film studies, writing, and literature. She received her doctorate in literature from the University of Oregon. Her new novel is The Book of Joan. Forthcoming is a book based on her recent TED Talk, “The Misfit’s Manifesto.” She lives in Oregon with her husband Andy Mingo and their renaissance man son, Miles. She is a very good swimmer.

About Zinn Adeline

Zinn Adeline is the Creative Engineer for Corporeal Writing, and she is trained and skilled in the design and construction of all things Corporeal Writing. So we made that title up for her. Because we do things like that. Things like disrupt the order of things. Things like invent. Zinn has an interdisciplinary background in Philosophy, Women’s Studies & Literary Theory. While doing her graduate work in creative writing she accepted Lidia Yuknavitch’s invitation to collaborate on Corporeal Writing workshops. Her dream is to build an alternative arts program that dislocates “high theory,” ideas, and the creation of knowledge from privileged university settings and makes it available to everyone. She directs things-creative, education, operations, and develops things-workshops, vision, outreach, and manages things-finances, Lidialand, and communications. Also, she makes really delicious cocktails.

About Leigh Hopkins

Leigh Hopkins is a writer, speaker, and educator. In 2010, she left a career in social policy and education reform to move to Brazil. There, she launched a retreat center and founded Viva Institute by rigging a satellite dish to a boulder in a banana field.

You can read Leigh’s monthly column, “Secret Circus,” on bestselling-author Lidia Yuknavitch’s site, Corporeal Writing. Her essays have been published in Elephant Journal, ENTROPY Magazine, The Manifest-Station, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Viva Institute, and at LeighHereNow. Leigh lives in Philadelphia with her wife, a painter, and their jittery Jack Russell Terrier.

Read full bio.