Wednesday, Jun 21, 2023
Visiting Artist: Lydia Conklin (14)
About
Join us on Wednesday, June 21 at 5pm for a reading and conversation with writer and LW alumni Lydia Conklin (14). Conklin will read from their collected short stories Rainbow Rainbow – published in 2022 by Catapult Press.
Rainbow Rainbow is a fearless collection of stories that celebrate 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. Chicago Review of Books reviewer Kasey Peters writes: "The book is a deeply necessary and urgent showcase of sorts: a place for readers to learn and relearn themselves, a place of complexity and confrontation and joy. Like the invented band from which its name was derived, this collection has anthems, ballads, sexy slow jams, and total bangers. Rainbow Rainbow invites readers to realize themselves, however they are now, and however they will be."
Where: Fishers Island Library
When: Wednesday, June 21, 5pm
Refreshments will be served and copies of Conklin's book will be available for purchase.
Artist
Bio
Lydia Conklin (14) has received a Stegner Fellowship, four Pushcart Prizes, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, a Creative Writing Fulbright in Poland, a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, work-study and tuition scholarships from Bread Loaf, and fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Emory University, Hedgebrook, Djerassi, the James Merrill House, and elsewhere. Their fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, One Story, McSweeney’s, American Short Fiction,and VQR. 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. They’ve served as the Helen Zell Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan and are currently an Assistant Professor of Fiction at Vanderbilt University. Their story collection, Rainbow Rainbow, was longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award and The Story Prize.