Rainbow Rainbow Book

RELEASE DATE - 9 JUNE 2022

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.

‘What a gorgeous ode to queer life in all its awkward, tragic, hilarious, erotic, and joyful forms!  I savoured each one of these stories, laughed and gasped aloud, and marvelled 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.’
Melissa Febos, author of Whip Smart and Abandon Me

'Lydia Conklin writes with humour and tenderness about the way we love now. Rainbow Rainbow is an impressive and beautiful collection.'
Lorrie Moore, author of Bark

'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 humour, to surprise and tickle us, to regale and disarm us, and, in the end, to devastate us with truths that are full of mystery and melancholy.'
Jamel Brinkley, author of the National Book Award nominated A Lucky Man

'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, recognised them in all their queer complexity, missed them when the book was done.'
Justin Torres, author of We the Animals