Lidia Yuknavitch is a creative force in Portland’s literary scene. Not only are her books award-winning best sellers, but they’re often groundbreaking, like her Oregon Book Award-winning anti-memoir The Chronology of Water, or her novel The Small Backs of Children, in which she strove to break the novel’s form. Yuknavitch: "Flame up! As often as possible! Verge is certainly a whole book of big flame. These stories are all catching a character on the edge of something. They’re either gonna make the worst choice ever or the best choice ever. Change or grow or die. And they’re vibrating. All the times in my life when I was about to do something that was either gonna blow up my world or bring something great, I felt a vibration." by Suzette Smith