Lydi Conklin

Lydi Conklin's debut story collection, Rainbow Rainbow, was published by Catapult in May 2022. They have received a Stegner Fellowship, a Fulbright Scholar Award to Poland, a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, two Pushcart Prizes, a Creative Writing Fellowship from Emory University, work-study and tuition scholarships from Bread Loaf, and fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, Djerassi, the James Merrill House, the Vermont Studio Center, VCCA, Millay, Lighthouse Works, and the Sitka Center, among others. Their fiction has appeared in Tin House, The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, Narrative Magazine and elsewhere. They have drawn graphic fiction for The Believer, Lenny Letter, Drunken Boat, and the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago. Lydi is an assistant professor of fiction at Vanderbilt University.

The Value of Support

"I was in a really difficult place with my writing and my life when I received news of the Rona Jaffe Award, and it made a massive difference in my life. Suddenly I realized someone believed in my work, and that I had to live up to what the committee and the foundation had given me. The news of the award gave me the confidence to push forward on a really difficult revision of my novel and to believe in my own writing again. The financial support has also been hugely important to me, and has given me the freedom to quit a bunch of my freelance jobs and to feel authorized to take time to just write."