Rainbow Rainbow, Lydia Conklin
Rainbow Rainbow, Lydia Conklin
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Rainbow Rainbow

Author: Lydia Conklin

Narrator: Julia Weldon

Unabridged: 5 hr 39 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/13/2022


Synopsis

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

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.

About Lydia Conklin

Lydia Conklin has received a Stegner Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's 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.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Andrew on March 24, 2022

2.5 stars? I guess? CW: Sexual Abuse, Pedophilia, Pet Death, Transphobia, and more, probably. Let me start with what I did enjoy: I loved the short story Pioneers, a story about a child that is on the cusp of consciously understanding that they're transgender when they're assigned the part of a matr......more

Goodreads review by Brooke on July 19, 2022

I picked out this book because of its colorful cover and positive reviews, one calling it a “gorgeous ode to queer life”. There was nothing gorgeous about how horrendously weird and depressing every queer and trans story was for no reason except to close with a dark ending. I did enjoy the exploratio......more

Goodreads review by Heather on May 30, 2022

Truly brilliant, honest, queer stories told without judgment of the idiosyncrasies and paradoxes of the human experience. Rainbow, Rainbow by Lydia Conklin takes us inside queer and trans characters' minds with raw awareness. It took a few chapters for me to adjust to the white-hot honesty, but I se......more

Goodreads review by Emily on August 01, 2022

I enjoy a complex exploration and/or understanding of gender and sexuality, but this book & these stories didn't do it for me. It is also incredibly funny to see everyone lauding this as such a "true" and "honest" representation of queerness when it is... not that? A true and honest representation o......more

Goodreads review by Kathleen on May 25, 2022

An impressive debut. This collection of 10 stories won't be for everyone but short story fans as well as those who value queer, trans, gender non-conforming people should pick it up for its thoughtful and enlightening approach to so many issues. Know that Conklin addresses some uncomfortable and dif......more