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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
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RAINBOW RAINBOW

Lydia Conklin

Stories

This timely story collection follows the lives of a vast array of characters on the gender spectrum from queer gender-nonconforming women, to nonbinary characters and transmen.

In this exuberant, prize-winning collection, queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming characters seek love and connection in hilarious and heartrending stories that reflect the complexity of our current moment. A nonbinary writer on the eve of top surgery enters into a risky affair during the height of COVID. A lesbian couple enlists a close friend as a sperm donor, plying him with a potent rainbow-colored cocktail. A lonely office worker struggling with their gender identity chaperones their nephew to a trans YouTube convention. And in the depths of a Midwestern winter, a sex-addicted librarian relies on her pet ferrets to help resist a relapse at a wild college fair. Capturing both the dark and lovable sides of the human experience, Rainbow Rainbow establishes debut author Lydia Conklin as a fearless new voice for their generation. Lydia Conklin identifies as non-binary trans. They are a current Stegner Fellow in fiction and have received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award, a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, three Pushcart Prizes (included in this collection!), a Creative Writing Fulbright in Poland, a Creative Writing Fellowship from Emory University, work-study and tuition scholarships from Bread Loaf, multiple fellowships from MacDowell, and fellowships at Yaddo, Hedgebrook, Djerassi, the James Merrill House, the Vermont Studio Center, VCCA, Millay, and Harvard University, among others. Their fiction has appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere. They have drawn cartoons for The New Yorker and Narrative Magazine, and graphic fiction for The Believer, Lenny Letter, and the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago.

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Book Published 2022-05-31 by Catapult

Comments

Rainbow Rainbow is a triumph, and Lydia Conklin is a marvel. Each story is full of wonder and trouble. I felt as if I knew these characters, recognized them in all their queer complexity, missed them when the book was done.

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. Throughout the collection, it's clear Conklin has a masterful grasp on characterization and tone. They give the reader exactly what they're looking for even if they don't know it. Read more...

Rainbow Rainbow is a debut that many of us have long been waiting for. The sentences in this collection leap off the page with delightfully vivid animation, and the queer and trans characters in each story take journeys that cover a breathtaking range of emotional distance. Lydia Conklin, above all, understands the power of humor, to surprise and tickle us, to regale and disarm us, and, in the end, to devastate us with truths that are fully of mystery and melancholy.

Conklin introduces themself as a writer to watch with these open-eyed, tenderhearted, well-crafted stories.

Embracing eagerness and insecurity, doubt and fortitude, Conklin's ten tales resonate through the characters' dynamic moments of realization.

What a gorgeous ode to queer life in all its awkward, tragic, hilarious, erotic, and joyful forms! I savored each one of these stories, laughed and gasped aloud, and marveled at their pitch-perfect dialogue and masterful sentences. Lydia Conklin's debut collection offers one of the strongest new voices in recent memory and one that is certain to belong in the canon of contemporary queer literature.

RAINBOW RAINBOW is An LGBTQ Reads Most Anticipated Book An Electric Literature Most Anticipated Book A Seahawk Most Anticipated Book A LitHub Most Anticipated Book of the Year The Millions, A Most Anticipated Book of the Year An NPR Best Book of the Year A Nerd Daily Most Anticipated Book A Publishers Weekly Best Summer Read A Time Most Anticipated Book of the Year

Throughout, Conklin is gracefully multi-note as they reveal the complexities of queer relationships, always allowing their characters to be themselves. Read more...

Conklin brings nuance and compassion to the subject matter and displays a captivating interest in human contradiction. Conklin's command of structure ensures that each story has a satisfying arc, but most impressive is the author's precise and evocative prose... This talented writer is brimming with skills and heart.

Dazzlingly immersive... There is darkness and shadow here alongside humor and wit. The characters feel alive as Conklin expertly navigates the tricky, awkward, beautiful, and horrifying moments that life will always present. Rainbow Rainbow is playful at the same time that it poses existential questions of morality, truth, good, bad, and everything in between. Read more...

Lydia Conklin's timely debut, Rainbow Rainbow, should be celebrated as both a work of activism and a literary triumph... Reading about these poignant inner lives is absorbing and thought-provoking.

Lydia Conklin writes with humor and tenderness about the way we love now. Rainbow Rainbow is an impressive and beautiful collection.

UK: Simon & Schuster

The stories in this dazzling collection take place everywhere... all of them encompassing LGBTQ+ identity in ways small, large, and compulsively readeable. Read more...

Captivating and brimming with love for queer life in all its weird glory, Lydia Conklin's debut collection, Rainbow Rainbow, is by turns exuberant, tragic, funny and whisper-quiet. Conklin's luminescent portrayals open a doorway into the queer universe for readers of all stripes. Walk through, Conklin beckons, make yourself at home. Read more...