The queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming characters in Lydi Conklin’s exuberant story collection are all on the cusp of some big change. They’re all seeking human connection in one form or another: love, acceptance, or simply an acknowledgement of who they are. When they screw up—and they nearly always do—the effect is hilarious, heart-tensing, or both.
Lydi Conklin is the recipient of a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, and four Pushcart Prizes. Their fiction has appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere, and their cartoons have appeared in The New Yorker and Narrative Magazine, among others. They are Assistant Professor of Fiction at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.
Because Rainbow, Rainbow is a terrific collection of stories about queer life in 21st century America. Because Rainbow, Rainbow is also a terrific collection of stories about what it’s like to be human—flawed, complicated, not always likable—in 21st century America.
“The real political imperative is to allow queer people to have the dignity of being able to be complicated, full people,” says Lydi Conklin on the Living Writers podcast. Listen to the whole three-question interview here.