"Transition in and of itself is a sacred and holy thing." — Kyle Lukoff
A conversation with prolific author Kyle Lukoff on fighting for ourselves, our friends, and the world we want.
My daughter is very confused by my habit of taking notes in books while reading, it offends her still-forming personal propriety. My mother, the former English teacher, taught me to actively interact with any text, to be in constant dialogue with writers— and now my books are full of underlines, asterisks, words, hearts, and even (am I embarrassed by this analogue?) “LOL”s.
This old habit is coming in handy as I build my book club hosting muscles. When I sit down to prepare for our author discussions, there’s more than enough material to work with: marks in the book/s, notes in my journal, post-its of questions from members. The art, I am learning, is editing down to craft a meaningful conversation. (Just like writing, natch.)
I hope you enjoy reading this very special, rich discussion with my friend Kyle Lukoff; it fed my soul to revisit. It’s a long one, but worth it. There is one small whiff of a spoiler towards the end but IMO doesn’t take away from the joy of experiencing how this adventure unfolds. I noted when it appears.
Our next author conversation is this Thursday with superstar Torrey Peters. Torrey’s latest, Stag Dance, collects four dramatically different stories that fill in the color and shape of a trans experience, even while characters have no conceit of ‘trans’ as a category. I’ve attended two recent book events with Torrey—she’s incredible—you won’t want to miss. RSVP for Thurs April 17th 5p PT / 8p ET on Zoom. (Reminder: You don’t have to read the book in advance. Just come with an open heart.)
Save the date! In May, we’re switching back to memoir and reading Oliver Radclyffe’s lovely Frighten the Horses. Oliver will join us in conversation on Wednesday, May 28.
Kyle Lukoff is the author of A World Worth Saving, a middle-grade novel about a trans boy named A, who encounters a Golem – a Jewish mythological creature – that helps protect him from both real and supernatural threats. Kyle is the author of many, many books, which you can get to know through Kyle RW's (in)complete guide to writer Kyle (Lukoff).
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. Book club members are identified with their first initial.
Kyle RW: Kyle, I think your book is really beautiful. Last time I we were together, I had not yet read. Now I get to gush about it in front of you and the whole book club. [slash internet]
I love the section that you read for us tonight. [Three trans teenagers meet while learning to dumpster dive for food.] It encapsulates what I love about your novel and your writing in general: you bring so much of your ethos and how you operate through the world into your writing. You often write about difficult topics with humor and lightness.
Kyle L: Thank you. I don’t know how else to do it. That’s how I approach everything.
Kyle RW: Let’s start with names—we both chose Kyle for ourselves. Choosing one’s name is a real special thing for a trans person. I’m curious how you go about naming your characters.
Kyle L: Naming characters takes me a long time. Sometimes I’ll give a character a placeholder name, intending to change it later, but then that name accidentally sticks until the book goes into print. I try to be more intentional, but it doesn’t always happen.
Also, one thing that's incredibly hard about naming transmasculine characters is that I know so many of us. Many of us have very common names that would be easy to put into a book, or really weird and funny names that would be fun to put in a book, but if I were to choose any of those names, a whole cohort of people would think I was naming a character after them. Whether it's someone I love but wasn't intentionally referencing, someone I don't like and would never want to immortalize, or just a friendly acquaintance, it does feel like a big responsibility.
I've also found that I can base a character on a person, or I can name a character after a person, but I cannot do both. If a character shares a name with someone I know in real life, that character isn't based on them at all. And if a character is inspired by someone I know, I never use their actual name.
For example, I chose the name Razor because that seemed like a great name for an incredibly spiky, non-binary teenager. I did vaguely know a chaotic genderqueer named Razor way, way, way back in the day. And then, literally right before a book event, a friend told me about a trans anarchist house nearby with a resident named Razor that was cat sitting for them. So it works for all of those reasons, but isn’t chosen because of a specific person.
Kyle RW: What about your choice to have the main character go by just "A"? It’s immediately noticeable how you choose to represent A’s deadname with dashes. (The book opens with it!)
Kyle L: The main character uses the letter A as his name because he doesn't know what he wants his name to be yet; he doesn't want to pick a placeholder name from a baby book, and he doesn’t feel ready to pick his forever name yet. By the end of the novel, we still don't know what his name is, and I did that on purpose because I wanted to show that he is still growing and changing and learning. Even if you don’t know what name you want to go by, you can still be a whole and complete person, deserving of respect.
Kyle RW: I read the novel, but I heard from friends who listened that there is a special sound effect to represent these dashes.
Kyle L: Yeah, I didn’t think about that part. I felt really bad when the audiobook engineers were like, “we don’t know how to record the first word of the book.” We worked together to figure out how to do it. One idea was to come up with a deadname, but that wasn’t an option I was willing to consider. The solution we came up with was to use a Peanuts-esque “wah wah wah” sound where you understand that a word is being spoken, but you can’t quite hear it. That turned out to be a really clever way of getting it across.
Kyle RW: I'd never seen anyone handle a trans character this way, allowing them to be in the messy middle of transition. Your book is very Jewish, I wondered if you were consciously, or subconsciously, referencing how some Jews write G-d with a dash?
Kyle L: Actually, G-d is stylized that way at a couple of points in the book, I think, when the Rabbi phrases it that way, but other people don't.
Kyle RW: I'm not Jewish, but I have a lot of Jews in my life, I've even been to services with you. Can you talk about how this book came to be and the spirituality that's underneath it?
Kyle L: The story originally came about because a librarian friend messaged me and said, "You should write a book about a golem that protects trans kids."
In my first conceptions of the book, I knew there would be a golem, and that the main character would be Jewish in the way that I was, growing up in the Pacific Northwest and fairly isolated from Jewish community, without a lot of Jewish education, in a Reform family. I thought the golem would be the only Jewish mythological element, and that I'd have to invent or borrow from other fantasy elements, because I didn't know there was enough Ashkenazi Jewish mythology to craft a whole book around it.
Then I started writing, and got to the first supernatural demon scene. I was writing a character that seemed like she was possessed, but I thought, "Jews don't really do possession like that – that's not really a thing for us." So I decided to go to the library to find a book on Jewish mythology to help me replace this “weirdly Catholic" possession scene. And at the library, I found a book called Spirit Possession in the Jewish Traditions: Case Studies from the Middle Ages to Today.
There’s this Yiddish word "bashert," which means destiny, and finding that book felt bashert. Almost too on-the-nose. I realized that I could stay within Jewish mythology for this story. Everything I needed I could find from that lore. That allowed the book itself to become more deeply Jewish, because I didn't have to go outside that lane to find ways to make it work. I didn't know it was going to become an intensely religious book with spiritual and God-focused themes. That's not what I intended, but it's what the story ended up demanding over the years it took me to write it. That's just how I managed to make everything make sense, square all the circles, write myself out of corners, and make the ending feel satisfying and resonant with the beginning.
Kyle RW: Reviewing the book tonight, I was struck again by the scene when the Golem asks A for a breath of life. A dear friend of mine, a Rabbi, wrote a book many years ago called The Breath of Life which talks about the spiritual connection to wind. In your book, wind is such a powerful force, almost a character itself. Were you aware of all of these deeper connections?
Kyle L: Yeah, a lot of things in this book made sense by accident. I wanted to give A some little quirk, because every main character needs something to differentiate them from all the other main characters. I gave him my habit of reciting the alphabet, or thinking about the alphabet as a way to self-soothe.
[tiny spoiler alert, skip down to the next bolded question to avoid.]
When I wrote the final climactic battle scene, I didn’t know how to get A out of the fight. In the first couple drafts I muddled through versions that were terrible, like, “I took a deep breath and through my power the windows exploded!” I couldn’t fix the scene until I considered using the alphabet quirk. It turns out that my weird habit from childhood is deeply rooted in several Jewish teachings, and also could, in fact, be the thing that saves the day.
So you would think that I did it that purpose from the beginning, and you would be wrong. A lot of this book feels like destiny. A lot of it came together in a way that it simply had to. Like, I don’t want to give you the sense that I don’t know what I’m doing. On some level, I probably do. But this book is still a big mystery to me about how it came together. I’m scared for people to read it, because I did my best, but I don’t know if it really works.
Kyle RW: I’m here to mirror back to you that it does. Let’s open up to the group.
K: I'd love to hear more about not wanting A to be "the chosen one," how you went about creating a more complex main character.
Kyle L: There's a great middle grade novel called Un Lun Dun by China Miéville that very intentionally takes the “chosen one” trope and turns it on its head. It's about a girl named Zanna who is prophesied to save the magical world under London called Un Lun Dun. She races into battle with a flaming sword, gets hit on the head, and has to go home with a concussion. Then her best friend goes back and says, "Hey, do you want me to try to save the world?" They say, "No, you can't do it. You're not the chosen one. You're the sidekick." And she says, "Okay, but the chosen one has a concussion, so do you want me to try?"
I don't want to write in the vein of the "one great man" theory of history, which can occasionally be the "one great woman" theory, which says that one strong, brave person did the thing, and that's why we're all here today. That's almost never true. We know the Rosa Parks story, but that erases Claudette Colvin and the other women who did the same thing before her. It also erases the people in Montgomery who loaned their cars, who walked every day, who pooled their resources. Great change is always made through collective effort, and I didn't want to write a book that perpetuated this myth that I find politically suspicious.
But, I also wanted it to be fun. And when you write a book with a main character, it has to follow this main character. How do you have a book with a main character while making it clear that he is a fairly normal person who would be nowhere without other people's support?
Kyle RW: When I was going back through the book today, there are brilliant moments where I hear your political theory spoken by the Golem. Towards the end, in the last battle, the Golem says to A, "There's nothing about you that is uniquely suited to succeed in these times or to face this threat. When I told you that I knew not why I was called to serve you, that was the truth. No one is ever the right person to change the course of history. No one should have to be."
Towards the end, there’s a moment where A says to himself that they're holy, that they see themselves as holy. I want to know if you feel holy.
Kyle L: Maybe. I don't know. There's a lot in this book that I wrote where I just kind of closed my eyes, held my breath, and let my fingers go, and by the end of it, I had sentences like that one. Writing always feels like I'm channeling something outside of myself, and this book is a profound example of that. There's a lot, especially in scenes where the golem is talking, where I wrote something that sounded good, and I didn't even know if I believed it, but it was what I needed that character to hear at that moment.
This book honestly changed me as a person, in a way that none of my other books have. I am a different writer, a different man, than I was when I began it.
Kyle RW: Can you say more about that? How did it change you?
Kyle L: No. [laughs] That's private.
However, one thing I’ll share is that the hardest circle for me to square in this book was that I knew it was about a trans character, where the transness was important to the story. More than just "I wanted to write a trans character." I also knew that this book had supernatural evil that was fixated on trans people, and I didn't know why. I had to make those things both work internally, and connect to each other.
What I finally figured out after months, if not years, of pondering was: what do all trans people have in common? It's surprisingly little, but I realized that the one thing we all share is that we were told we were something, and then we came to the knowledge that we were something else, and then we made a decision about what to do with that knowledge. That decision could look like anything, but there was a decision made.
Then I learned from my research that Jewish demons were supposedly created on the eve of the sixth day, and God did not have time to finish them before Shabbos, so demons are creatures who are eternally unfinished. This contrasts with trans people, who have taken the power necessary to finish ourselves.
That's what connected these major elements and drove the spiritual underpinnings of the story—transition in and of itself is a sacred and holy thing, and that something unfinished might want to take that power for themselves. I was talking about this to a friend of mine who I named the Rabbi's husband after, and he said, "Right, because the work of destruction is done by those who are themselves not whole." I was like, wait, say that again, wrote it down, and quoted him in the book.
Kyle RW: That theme connects to the opening quote of the book from Julian Jarboe.
Kyle L: Yes, my friend Julian wrote a book called Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel, and the quotation, which you may have seen elsewhere, is: "God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason that he made wheat, but not bread, and fruit, but not wine, so that humanity might share in the act of creation." That's just the whole book right there. I love that quotation, and I'm very glad that Julian let me use it.
S: I want to hear about how you chose the title.
Kyle L: I started writing this book in 2019, and I really, really hoped that it would be coming out into a different world. I want it to feel more like speculative fiction and less like realistic fiction. I'm not thrilled about the current reality, but that's the world we live in.
I actually didn't choose the title—none of my novels have the initial title I chose. It was a collaboration between me, my editor, and the sales and marketing team. I think we picked "A World Worth Saving" because there's a part where Sal, the friend, is telling A that there's no point in trying to do this grand gesture to save the world if you're not going to treat the people in your life the way they deserve to be treated.
We all want to make—we all want to live in a world that is worth it.
“Even if you don’t know what name you want to go by, you can still be a whole and complete person, deserving of respect.” — Kyle Lukoff
Kyle RW: I love the way that you bring queer adolescents to life in your books. In this novel, you turn a conversion therapy group on its head, it becomes the trans teenagers’ community. I was reminded of how grateful I was for the queer youth group I would attend in Washington, D.C. There’s someone here tonight I met way back then, my first trans friend. What did you draw from to build out this world? Were support groups also part of your growing up?
Kyle L: The fictional conversion therapy group "So Sad" was pure invention—I've thankfully never been to any kind of conversion therapy situation. When I was a teenager, I found a group called GLOBE (Gay Lesbian Open-minded Bisexual Empowerment) that was about 45 miles north of where I was living at the time. That was the first place where I met other queer teenagers who were out and actively seeking queer community. That's where I met my first girlfriend, and we're still really close.
For a long time, I resisted writing about teenagers because I didn't think I knew enough of them to do them justice. I didn't want to be another adult speaking for 13-to-18-year-olds. Luckily, through my speaking engagements at schools, I've gotten to meet lots of queer and trans teenagers.
A thing I should have known from the beginning is that teenagers are people, and there's no one way that teenagers talk or act or relate to the world. There's literally a teenager I'm in touch with now who lives in Ohio who has schooled me on the history of ballet as a tool of imperialism. If you were to ask what normal teenagers are into, you would not say "the history of ballet as a tool of imperialism," but there's this teenager, and she's cool as hell. There's also this 16-year-old trans kid in Iowa I've been in touch with for almost a year who is really interested in history and has answered a lot of my questions about what it's like being a trans youth today.
I try to write characters who feel real to me and trust that if they feel real to me, there is someone who can relate to them.
Kyle RW: I really love how your trans characters fight with each other. There's conflict, it feels real. I wonder if you could speak to the politics of representation and your responsibility about what you expose and what you don't.
Kyle L: I don't think about the politics of representation or what I should and shouldn't expose. I simply write books that I'm interested in, and what I'm most interested in is me and my friends and what we do on any given day. Sometimes that looks like hating each other and having really bad fights. Sometimes those people aren't my friends – sometimes we actually just hate each other.
I think what sets my books about trans characters apart is that I've been out as trans for a very long time. I started coming out as gay in 2001, which was 24 years ago, and I came out as a trans guy in 2004, which was 21 years ago. I started medically transitioning in 2007, which was 18 years ago. A baby born the day I started testosterone would now be old enough to vote.
That's a long time, and I spent almost all of it in New York City where my roommates were trans, the people I went on dates with were trans, and the people I had the biggest fights with were trans. I babysat for trans people, and some of my trans friends are now dead. To me, trans people are just normal humans. It's not just related to a transition process where you're "normal" at the end of it, and it's also not like it's just "my roommate's cousin that I got to meet one time."
One thing that really differentiates me is that I don't have a trans child. I meet a lot of parents of trans kids, which creates a very particular dynamic and relationship. But I'm a grown-up—I'm a 40-year-old man with decades of being in trans community, sometimes loving, sometimes hating, sometimes just tolerating, oftentimes just getting along with other trans people. I'm not worried about what is good or bad representation. I just want to tell stories that I think are interesting.
“I'm a 40-year-old man with decades of being in trans community, sometimes loving, sometimes hating, sometimes just tolerating, oftentimes just getting along with other trans people. I'm not worried about what is good or bad representation. I just want to tell stories that I think are interesting.” — Kyle Lukoff
B: How did you find writing, or how were you encouraged and/or encouraged yourself to bring your creativity not just to the page but to the world?
Kyle L: I'm just incredibly lucky. I started writing seriously because I had graduated from college, was working at a job, and was bored and lonely a lot of the time. I realized that if I left work and brought my laptop to a coffee shop and started working on a short story, I could say to myself, "I'm working on a short story," which made me feel better than saying, "None of my friends want to hang out with me, and I have nothing better to do with my time."
Writing was still this way that I kept myself busy, that I kept myself from feeling bored, and it slowly turned into stuff that other people wanted to publish. Then in 2020, I quit my job, so I didn't have a paycheck or health insurance, and my main plan was to make an income from school visits, which weren't happening either. But I already had this pre-existing coping mechanism of how to distract myself when I was lonely and sad, and in 2020, I was lonely and sad a lot.
Writing was still this way that I kept myself busy, that I kept myself from feeling bored, and it slowly turned into stuff that other people wanted to publish. Then in 2020, I quit my job, so I didn't have a paycheck or health insurance, and my main plan was to make an income from school visits, which weren't happening either. But I already had this pre-existing coping mechanism of how to distract myself when I was lonely and sad, and in 2020, I was lonely and sad a lot.
It's just a weird quirk that my coping mechanism happened to turn into both a lucrative and rewarding career. If I were really into crocheting or needlepoint or woodworking, I would either be a very successful craft artist, or I would have a job with a lot of projects at my house.
Kyle RW: I want to end by telling you publicly how much I love you and appreciate that you're in my life. I remember a time when we could count on one hand all of the published books that featured gay parents or picture books that had queer representation. It is really no small thing that you are putting all this beautiful work into the world.
Kyle L: Thank you. What I hope readers take away from "A World Worth Saving" is that there is something sacred in all of us, particularly in how we choose to define ourselves. And most importantly, that none of us can save the world alone—we need each other, in all our messy, complicated glory. The world is worth saving precisely because we're in it together, fighting for each other, even when we don't always agree.
When I look at the current landscape for trans youth, it can feel overwhelming. But I also see incredible resilience, community, and love. In many ways, that's what the golem represents—not just protection, but the power that comes from claiming your identity and fighting for others who share your experience.
In the end, that's what makes a world worth saving: not just the grand gestures, but the small daily acts of kindness, standing up for each other, and creating spaces where everyone can be their full, authentic selves.
For more Kyle Lukoff, check out:
Website: kylelukoff.com
Instagram: @kylelukoffwrites