“I never went back to New York”: An Interview with Lydia Conklin
“In my prose, everything could potentially happen in real life, even if it’s the weirdest possible version of what is possible.”
Lydia Conklin has received a Stegner Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, four Pushcart Prizes, a Creative Writing Fulbright in Poland, a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, 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, and elsewhere. Their fiction has appeared in McSweeney’s, American Short Fiction, The Paris Review, One Story, 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, and their novel, Songs of No Provenance, is forthcoming in 2025.
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As summer was coming to a close and classes were quickly approaching, I was given the opportunity to conduct an interview with writer and cartoonist Lydia Conklin.
Conklin is a writer, cartoonist, and assistant professor at Vanderbilt whose work centers on the lived experiences of LGBTQ+ people and how our global political landscape informs how queer people navigate the world. Because of my own queer identity, their work speaks to me in a myriad of ways, but at the prospect of interviewing them, I felt both excited and incredibly nervous.
Because — aside from class assignments and essays — I haven’t written anything in over a year, I feel like I have nothing to say; the blank page swallows up every idea I have as soon as I come face to face with it. And it’s hard to feel like and be a writer when … well … you don’t write.
With this in mind, not only did I want to ask Lydia Conklin about their work but also their personal creative process. What does it mean to be a writer when you’re struggling to find inspiration? What happens when routines change?
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Because you work in multiple genres, how is your creative process different for visual art versus writing?
The processes are very different. I write, typically, all day — or at least with as much time as I have. I’m a professor, and since the semester is starting, it’s a little bit hectic. However, I have time over the summer, so I’ll write all morning and all afternoon until I have somewhere else to be or something else to do. During the term, I have days off or I have meetings, but I’ll write as much as I can. I usually do comics in the later part of the day. Basically that’s because writing is so mentally draining. It just takes everything out of me. Writing takes so much concentration, and there’s so much constant decision making. Whereas with comics, there’s more aspects of the process that are mindless and calming. Things like inking, cutting paper, ruling out paper, or shading — these things don’t take up all of my brain power. I’m able to listen to audiobooks or music. I’m able to think more and let my mind wander as I work on comics, so that’s why I do them more in the evenings.
How do your short stories and comics speak to one another, or what are their similarities?
Often the root themes are the same. For example, I have a comic called “Lesbian Cattle Dogs” that deals with being in a gay, codependent relationship, and also deals with questions of parenthood that I also talk about in my prose writing. My comics have speculative elements that my prose never has. In my prose, everything could potentially happen in real life, even if it’s the weirdest possible version of what is possible. In my comics there are talking dogs and flying body parts, all kinds of strange things that aren’t reality.
The main difference is the tools available to me in comics versus prose. In my comics I have to find a way to communicate everything through dialogue and action. In short stories, I can use interiority.
My work centers on queer and trans narratives, and I try to balance humor and sadness in both genres. My comics do lean a little more towards humor, but the goal is always to balance those emotions.
Do some characters work better for cartoons and others for short stories? Do these characters usually know their own place within your work?
It usually is obvious. I wouldn’t normally say, “Oh! I wonder what thing this will be,” because with comics I’ll just know what I’ve been working on for years and continue on with that project. With comics I’m not that spontaneous. I think the ideas are the same in comics and in prose. For example, I’ve explored the question of parenthood in both comics and prose. For me, with the characters that come to me, it’s normally obvious which medium they would appear in for some reason. I think part of that is because I don’t use interiority in my comics and instead just use dialogue. You don’t have quite the same access to characters’ thoughts in comics.
It feels as though, for many students in university, the rigor of an academic setting often leaves little time for creative work. You have to be very intentional and carve out time. Since classes are back in session, how do you balance work and time to write creatively?
Overall, I love teaching! I feel like teaching feeds my writing, and writing feeds my teaching; they go hand in hand. Now, a career in academia isn’t for everyone. I know some grad students feel drained by teaching in a big way, but I always tell them that if your teaching can feed your writing — if you feel invigorated by it — and writing feeds your teaching, then it’s a good path to be on.
In the last year or so, I haven’t felt much motivation to write. Have you ever gone through a period in your life where you haven’t produced a lot of work?
I haven’t really gone through a time where I haven’t been writing because I feel like it’s one of my lifelines. I have to write every day — I’m pretty compulsive in that way. On the other hand, I do know people who don’t write every day. In fact, I know a woman who won’t write for years and then suddenly she’ll spend a few months intensively writing a book, and when she’s done she won’t write again for another few years. It works beautifully for her, but for me writing is a daily thing. That might be more related to my anxiety than needing to do it that way, but I also think writing is the way I process and see the world.
I think where I’m at right now is … I don’t know. I feel such a pressure to produce, especially after a long summer of being unproductive in my writing. It makes me think about the capitalist process of writing. I don’t really think in those terms. I only feel compelled to put something on the page if it’s bothering me to come out, if that makes sense. Unless I’m really struck with inspiration, I can go long periods without writing. I’m always being told that’s bad.
That makes a lot of sense. I feel like the actual process of writing is very rarely fun. It’s a lot of slogging and hard work, hard decision making. Over the summer I was lucky enough to go to a couple of residencies where I could just write all day. I found that one day I would be working really hard, fixing things and rewriting things in a really painful, concentrated way. On those days it felt like everything was so horrible, the work was so difficult. And then the next day I would read through it and be like, “Oh, that was actually decent!” But then that day I wouldn’t be doing a lot of the same intense work; I wouldn’t be as productive. So the days that felt good were actually the less productive days, and the days that felt hard were the ones where I was making more progress.
I think there’s this mythology where you have to write every day, but I don’t think that’s actually true for everyone. I think a lot of people have different processes. Some people are in “gathering mode” for a long time before they start putting things down. Actually, I think it would be better for me to take breaks sometimes, too. I think when you take a break you can see things in a fresh way, and that clarity could accelerate the project because you’re not banging your head against the same thing all day, every day.
Finally, since I’m currently in my master’s program, I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about your own experience in your master’s program?
I did my MFA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It was great, and I made a lot of friends during my time there. I was coming from New York City where I was working a normal job and commuting three hours a day. I was so busy, so many social events at that time in my life. Then, I came to this small city and all I had to do was go to some classes and teach one class a week, but for the most part I had all day to write.
It was very hard at first to balance my time, because I was so used to not having any free time … basically ever. The amount of time available to me could be overwhelming, and that’s really where I learned to concentrate and work all day. I learned so much craft-wise from my professors and peers. Also, graduate school is where I learned that I could actually have a career as a writer. I never thought that was possible. I thought, “I’ll just go to grad school for two years, then come back to New York and work my normal job again.” But people at school were talking about residencies and fellowships, teaching jobs, academia, etc. I hadn’t known about any of that, so grad school really changed the course of my life, and I never went back to New York.
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I came away from my conversation with Conklin feeling a lot better about my own writing process. Struggling to balance school, work, and a multitude of other life obligations can be hard for so many of us. It felt affirming to hear them talk about their friend who doesn’t write for years, and that taking a break can be a good thing. There are so many factors that affect our personal creative process, and as a young writer it’s okay to still be finding your footing.
The “gathering mode” that Conklin mentioned definitely feels like where I’m at right now, working to find inspiration and a story that feels worth telling. And I think a major part of “gathering” is reading work that inspires you. For that reason, I’m very excited to get my hands on Rainbow, Rainbow and hear more of what Lydia Conklin has to say about the book at this week’s In Process.
Abigail Wells is currently pursuing a master’s degree in English from Middle Tennessee State University. Her creative writing has been published in MTSU’s Collage and Off Center Magazine, as well as The Blue Marble Review, Bullshit Lit, Girls Right the World, Moody Zine, and Let’s Stab Caesar!, among others. In 2021, Wells was a recipient of the Richard C. and Virginia L. Peck Award, the MTSU English Department’s highest honor.
