This week on the Sewanee Review Podcast, assistant editor Brighid Griffin is joined by fiction writer and cartoonist Lydi Conklin, whose debut novel Songs of No Provenance was released in May of this year. Their story collection Rainbow Rainbow, published in 2023, plumbs the depths of the queer experience through its cast of tragicomic characters—including a librarian who reckons with her sex and love addiction, and an office worker who accompanies her nephew to a YouTube convention for transgender content creators. While talking through the conception of the collection, Conklin dishes on transgressive protagonists, friendship breakups, and the limiting quality of tokenism.
Lydi Conklin is the author of Rainbow Rainbow, which was long-listed for the Story Prize and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection. Their fiction has appeared in The Sewanee Review, Tin House, American Short Fiction, and The Paris Review. They’ve drawn comics for The New Yorker, The Believer, Lenny Letter, and other publications. They are an Assistant Professor of Fiction at Vanderbilt University.
The Sewanee Review Podcast is recorded in the Ralston Listening Room at the University of the South. This episode is produced by Luke Gair and edited by ProPodcast Solutions with music by Annie Bowers. Image credit to Emily April Allen. Don’t miss any of our conversations with some of today’s best writers. Subscribe to the Sewanee Review Podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.