Rainbow Rainbow

A collection of stories that celebrate the humour, 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.

In this delightful debut collection of prize-wining stories, queer, gender-nonconforming and trans characters struggle to find love and forgiveness, despite their sometimes comic, sometimes tragic mistakes. In one story, a young lesbian tries to have a baby with her lover using an unprofessional sperm donor and a high-powered, rainbow-coloured cocktail. In another, a fifth-grader explores gender identity by dressing as an ox – instead of a matriarch – for a class Oregon Trail reenactment. Meanwhile a nonbinary person on the eve of top surgery dangerously experiments with an open relationship during the height of the COVID crisis. With insight and compassion, debut author Lydia Conklin takes their readers to a meeting of a queer feminist book club and to a convention for trans teenagers, revealing both the dark and lovable sides of their characters. The stories in Rainbow Rainbow will make you laugh and wince, sometimes at the same time.

About the Author

Lydia Conklin has received a Stegner Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, three Pushcart Prizes, a Creative Writing Fulbright in Poland, a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, scholarships from Bread Loaf, and fellowships from Emory, MacDowell, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, Djerassi, and elsewhere. Their fiction has appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, and The Paris Review. They’ve drawn comics for The New Yorker, The Believer, Lenny Letter, and elsewhere.

They are currently the Zell Visiting Professor of Fiction at the University of Michigan