Fiction reading, class visit, and craft talk with Lydia Conklin, author of the collection of stories, Rainbow Rainbow. Conklin is a writer, cartoonist, and assistant professor at Vanderbilt whose work centers on the lived experiences of LGBTQ+ people and how our global political landscape informs how queer people navigate the world. Rainbow Rainbow celebrates the humor, darkness, and depth of emotion of the queer and trans experience that’s not typically represented: liminal or uncertain identities, queer conception, and queer joy.Reviewer Adam Vitcavage wrote, “Queer, bold, and beautiful. Each story is so full of laughter, love, awkwardness, and heartbreak that readers will feel so at home in each and every one.” The collection was longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award and The Story Prize, and their novel, Songs of No Provenance, is forthcoming in 2025.

Lydia Conklin is an Assistant Professor of Fiction at Vanderbilt University. They’ve received many prestigious national fellowships and awards, including Stegner Fellowship in Fiction at Stanford University, a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, three Pushcart Prizes, a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, a Creative & Performing Arts Fulbright to Poland, and many more. Their fiction has appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere. They have drawn graphic fiction for Lenny Letter, Drunken Boat, and the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago and cartoons for The New Yorker and Narrative Magazine.