Unfixed

a memoir by founder Kimberly Warner

For anyone who has ever wondered about the creation story behind Unfixed—it’s finally here! Unfixed: a memoir of family, mystery, and the currents that carry you home, will be releasse in bookstores everywhere on October 14, 2025 (Empress Editions)

PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY EDITOR’S PICK!!

“Warner’s poetic prose and intimate descriptions of her inscape… plunge readers directly into her reality.”—Publishers Weekly, Editor’s Pick


KIRKUS REVIEW WRITES:

“A gripping, often literary memoir…both accessible and poignant. This is a powerful reflection on identity, memory, and family. Genre-defying.”


 
 

Unfixed is a sweeping narrative of a woman’s inner journey into wholeness, despite physical and psychological derailments along her path. Through visceral, immediate prose, imaginary correspondence, and poetry, Kimberly revisits the unnerving circumstances of childhood in the 80’s and 90’s when the New Age movement redefined marriage, health, and sexuality. Finding her own salvation in the self-improvement dogma, she replaces grief, confusion, and uncertainty with magical-thinking and perfectionism long into adulthood until her body breaks and family secrets emerge. When her paternity, health, and very self become tethered to a nervous system unmoored, Kimberly is forced to lean into a steadiness of spirit where the incomprehensible becomes imaginable, and the possibility that frightens her most becomes a doorway into peace.

Presenting life experiences in single layers and then deep, looping complexities, Kimberly weaves her own fluid becoming into a larger ancestral story of past and future, calling in extraordinary lives both intimate and distant. As she reckons with a myriad of unknowns, she learns more than she ever expected to know, ultimately discovering a surprising kind of healing that embraces a wild and untamable life.

 
 
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Praise for Unfixed

I won't be able to sleep tonight. Just cry. This is way more than a page turner. It's a bloody masterpiece. The writing is exquisite. It takes you on a journey you didn’t know you needed - Kim Vanbruggen, former journalist and CEO.

I had the pleasure of discovering Warner on Substack when this spellbinding story was being serialised. To read it again in print only strengthens the impact and shores up the belief that her writing transcends the normal run of words on the page. Her story is one of depth and mystery, divine curiosity and unmoored faith in that which binds us; the impending nature of that which we can't control and the unerring search for each other. She lives by her words, to be unfixed in a world continually trying to insist we must do the opposite while being exactly as she is. This is more than a memoir, the story of a search on the wild seas of her life, it is a prayer and a song and pure light. You will love her. - Eleanor Anstruther, author, book trade professional

Warner's deeply moving account of her surprise parentage and health challenges would be compelling purely for the events alone, but Unfixed is not another crowded tour through tragedy. This isn't grief-slumming. But with a predisposition towards wisdom and an innate kindness, Warner makes a case for reconciliation with one's grief and circumstances, offering us a vision of how one can be knocked sideways, hold course at an odd angle, and find one's truest self. A beautiful memoir. - Adam Nathan, author

The act of reading Unfixed does something very interesting to time itself. A call and response across decades and worlds weaves through the narrative and lingers in the mind in just the way that a dream sometimes does. The revelations, when they come, aren't show-stopping reveals. They're bits of treasure having layers of sand dusted off them under the watchful eye of the author—the archaeologist. There's an undulation, too, which is practically a character in itself threading through the memoir. At times I'd even find myself swaying as I read. Warner has really managed something very special here (aside from achieving time travel) as she takes her reader on multiple journeys, through which we're somehow, unknowingly made to pay attention with as much presence and sincerity and surrender as she does. It's a lesson in humility, and in seeing the world anew. The only way it could have enchanted me more is if it had washed up on a shore inside a glass bottle. - Chloe Hope, writer Death & Birds

Without a doubt, it is the bravest piece of writing that I have ever read, full of soul-bearing passages. So much of this story resonated with me and I feel enriched by seeing so many things through Kimberly’s eyes and heart. - Greg Temple, CEO

I cannot recommend this serialized memoir enough. Here’s why. Guess who else pull up seats at this tea party? Honesty. Deep reflection. Mercy. Stunning prose. Kimberly’s story is gripping in itself. But/And so is the writing. I particularly love a writer whose work calls me to an empty page. I don’t quite know how to put it in words, other than it’s like a conversation I want to be part of through my own writing. - Holly Starley, freelancer, editor

Kimberly’s recounting of her childhood is so alive and raw. She writes about her parents’ crazy choices with the open, judgment-free perception of a child while infusing it with the wisdom and facile language of a woman who’s lived a full life. This memoir is personal and intimate, but it also provides a window into American life in the 1970s when so much was being questioned about marriage and family and sexuality. - Ben Wakeman, author, producer, musician

This story has all the makings of a limited series. It has perfect A and B storylines, two mysteries running in parallel timelines, two layered characters with two hearts both in deep conflict with themselves, both fueling the engines for the overall story—yearning curiosity versus fear/delight at what one discovers about one's parentage. It's so Noah Hawley meets folk mystery. - Alisa Kennedy Jones, TV writer/author

Chilling. Horror. Kimberly’s words are so powerful, I felt as if I were going through the experience with her. - Sara Davidson, NYT best-selling author

This is beyond memoir for me. Kimberly’s writing skill takes it to another level. I love these characters so much, they live inside of me somewhere, she draws them so beautifully that we can’t help but be moved. - Jan Cornall, writer, performer, teacher

It is so rare when a writer eradicates language after reading their work and replaces that absence with pure feeling. That silence is where the healing and magic thrive. Such achingly beautiful words on loss. - Jenovia Webb, author, trauma advocate and speaker

Tremendous writing. The unease is inescapable. - Kenny Farquharson - senior columnist with The Times, Edinburgh

I am never not breathtaken when I read this memoir. So raw. So unassuming. So immediate. This is forceful writing that drives straight to the heart. - Renée Eli, Ph.D, transdisciplinary scholar, educator

I like checking out the work of new subscribers, but nothing could have prepared me for this. I’m completely bowled over by Kimberly’s writing. - Safar Fiertze, writer

Kimberly speaks in ways that hide nothing—she writes in single layers, then in deep, deep complexities, and I feel everything because she knows how to show me. - Toni Prehoda Kahler, artist

 
 
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