{"id":957887,"date":"2025-12-05T10:41:40","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T07:41:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=957887"},"modified":"2025-12-05T10:41:40","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T07:41:40","slug":"the-chronology-of-water-author-lidia-yuknavitch-on-having-her-memoir-adapted-by-kristen-stewart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=957887","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Chronology of Water\u2019 Author Lidia Yuknavitch on Having Her Memoir Adapted by Kristen Stewart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u2018I Think Kristen Made Her Own Autonomous, Rebel-Yell Art\u2019: Lidia Yuknavitch on Having Her Memoir Adapted for the Big Screen<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
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By <\/span>Emma Specter<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Imogen Poots in Kristen Stewart\u2019s The Chronology of Water<\/em>, in limited theaters now.<\/span>Photo: Courtesy Les Films du Losange<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n
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Not everyone can say they\u2019ve seen their life story reflected back to them onscreen\u2014and even fewer people can claim the experience of having said story adapted by an internationally famous actor. But that\u2019s precisely what\u2019s happened to author Lidia Yuknavitch, whose 2011 memoir The Chronology of Water<\/em> formed the basis for Kristen Stewart\u2019s celebrated directorial debut of the same name.<\/p>\n

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The film\u2014which stars Imogen Poots as Yuknavitch and chronicles the author\u2019s myriad experiences with sexual abuse, addiction, and competitive swimming, to say nothing of her profound coming-of-age as an artist\u2014is out this week. Ahead of its release, Vogue<\/em> spoke to Yuknavitch about giving Stewart room to create her own interpretation of the book, shifting gears between writing and painting, the kinship she feels with Stewart and Poots, and (spoiler!) why she still hasn\u2019t seen the film.<\/p>\n

Vogue<\/em>: What does it feel like to see your book adapted into a film?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Lidia Yuknavitch:<\/strong> It\u2019s pretty mind-blowing. I don\u2019t really think of it the way that maybe other people do; I think Kristen made her own autonomous, rebel-yell art and my book was sort of a launching pad, or a kind of artistic inspiration, but what she made is all hers. It\u2019s her art, and I could not be happier for her. I\u2019m over the moon.<\/p>\n

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Yuknavitch in 2018.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Photo: Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

What was it like collaborating with Kristen?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I wasn\u2019t collaborating all that much. At the very beginning, she asked me a bunch of questions about people\u2019s reactions or emotional intensities, and I would answer them, and she\u2019d be like, \u201cCool,\u201d and then I wouldn\u2019t hear from her for a while. [Laughs<\/em>.] I\u2019d get another set of questions, and I\u2019d answer them, and she\u2019d be like, \u201cGot it.\u201d I think the collaboration was more of the heart and of a kind of sensibility that we share as unapologetic mammals who have something in their hearts and something in their guts and bodies that they have to find a form for. Maybe our deepest, most intimate collaboration just happens because we\u2019re two women artists who found each other in the world, and if we don\u2019t help each other, nobody else will.<\/p>\n

What was your experience of seeing the film for the first time like?<\/strong><\/p>\n

You might not like this answer, but I actually haven\u2019t seen it yet! It\u2019s literally killing me that I have not seen it, so hopefully I\u2019m not going to die. I\u2019ve read interviews with Kristen and reviews and things like that, and people I know and love have seen it and eagerly sent me their impressions; plus, I kind of get her vibe, so I feel like I\u2019ve seen it even though I haven\u2019t. It\u2019s still killing me, though, so the day I see it, everyone check on me and make sure I\u2019m still alive.<\/p>\n

Had you ever thought about who might play you in a movie prior to this experience?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not really, because I\u2019m an introvert. I\u2019m wired non-neurotypically, so I don\u2019t think about things like that, but when I see clips or images of Imogen, all the hairs on my body stand up; not because we can look like each other or anything like that, but just because I can see that she has an extraordinary ability to inhabit emotional intensity and a whole range. I can already tell that about her, and I suspect she\u2019s an extraordinary person and clearly an extraordinary actress. I mean, she\u2019s not playing me; she\u2019s stepping into a story that, yeah, sure, it\u2019s my version, because this stuff happened to me personally, but all women step into these stories. Our stories aren\u2019t all the same, but the parts we\u2019re supposed to keep clean and pretty and quiet have stuff underneath them, and she was willing to step into that. I don\u2019t think about who would play me in a movie, but what I do think is, you know, Holy fuck, there\u2019s a woman who is willing to step into the underneath-story and play it out.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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What does work look like for you these days?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I haven\u2019t been writing for over a year because I have some personal life stuff going on, but hundreds of paintings are coming out of me, so I\u2019m very curious about that. I\u2019m having to talk to them and ask them what they\u2019re about. Although last week, for the first time in a while, some novel stuff started coming out of me, so apparently I have the very, very beginnings of a novel going, and once they start coming, there\u2019s nothing I can do about it.<\/p>\n

This conversation has been edited and condensed.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The Chronology of Water<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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$20<\/span><\/p>\n

BOOKSHOP<\/p>\n

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Source URL: http:\/\/vogue.com\/article\/lidia-yuknavitch-the-chronology-of-water-interview<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TV & Movies \u2018I Think Kristen Made Her Own Autonomous, Rebel-Yell Art\u2019: Lidia Yuknavitch on Having Her Memoir Adapted for the Big Screen By Emma Specter December 5, 2025 Imogen Poots in Kristen Stewart\u2019s The Chronology of Water, in limited theaters now.Photo: Courtesy Les Films du Losange Not everyone can say they\u2019ve seen their life […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":957888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[50],"class_list":["post-957887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-vogue-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=957887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/957888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=957887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=957887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=957887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}