Kyle Lukoff
@KyleLukoff
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Author: Newstoneberywall (Newbery honor, Stonewall award x2), Nat. Book Award finalist; TOO BRIGHT TO SEE, WHEN AIDAN BECAME A BROTHER, + more. Rep: @agentsaba !
Philadelphia, PA
Joined November 2012
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On Saturday I was on a(nother) panel about banned books, and I think that's going to be the last time I talk about the subject for awhile, outside of school visits. (thread w/links at the end)
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My editor left a note in this draft asking why this one character seems like the "boss" of this queer punk squat and I have to explain to her that queer collective houses always have someone playing the role of Dad but no one ever acknowledges it.
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My cis gay friend Dan told me about his recent trip to the urologist, which is somehow one of the most hilarious yet frustrating trans-at-the-doctor experiences I've ever heard, and gave me permission to tell you about it!
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I exclusively read The Babysitters Club and Goosebumps for years and am now a judge for the National Book Award so I'm pretty sure it's fine to let kids read what they want.
I would 100% prefer my kid to be able to read and understand Moby Dick, but hate it and read rarely, than to love reading Diary of a Wimpy kid and its like frequently. A love of reading is nice, but it's not the goal of literacy instruction.
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and my friend, whose name is DANIEL but who mostly goes by DAN, was just like "She asked me my name! I told her!" and that is more trans-coded than some experiences I've had at the literal gynecologist.
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THEN when the doctor comes in, as stereotypically a urologist as possible, he opens, all aggrieved, with "I guess I'm supposed to call you '''DAN'''? The nurse there, she said you wanted me to call you ''DAN''" with big ol' verbal quotation marks around his very normal name.
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The nurse gave him a form to fill out, and one of the questions asked about his ability to maintain an erection during penetrative sex. Anxious Dan explained, as tactfully as possible, that that question was not, uh, relevant to his current or recently past experiences (
#bottom
)
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Dan, whose legal name is Daniel, was like..."uh, Dan, I guess? Most people call me Dan" and she went on to be like "we want this to be a supportive environment for the LBTG community" and he was like, ok. Neat. Sure.
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so the nurse was like, oh, ok, that's fine, leave that blank and just answer the other questions. She leaves the room, comes back like a minute later, and asks my cis gay friend, very gently and carefully, if there's a name he prefers to be called.
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Was looking for a trans-friendly massage place and found the worst one 🙃
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Every time I find myself tempted to tell parents that children are not their property, I remind myself that the core of my job is to help children come to the truth that they are not their parents' property.
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I'm old enough to have seen the shift from "women and trans men" to "women and trans" to "women and nonbinary" and "women and femmes" and am consistent enough to dislike all of them for the same reasons.
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@RaxKingIsDead
Probably because she could only be slain by someone not of woman born. Reasonable concern tbh
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(If you'd like to chime in with "That wasn't my experience" feel free to proactively imagine me responding with "Okay!")
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I'm thinking about how, when I started T at 23, everything got worse for awhile.
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Kids find out I'm trans: "Oh ok"
Kids see me wear my glasses for the first time: "YOU'RE WEARING GLASSES!! WHY DO YOU HAVE GLASSES ON?! I DIDN'T KNOW YOU WORE GLASSES!!!!"
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A trans person existed in the same place as kids and the school superintended apologized and said that "We love our students and never want to put them in uncomfortable or unsafe situations." They do not want us to survive.
An Idaho school district is apologizing for a partnership with a local children's theater because one of the actors is transgender. While most participated with no issue, some parents complained they were not warned they would be exposed to a trans person.
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I'm subbing at my old school today and a 4th grader confidently and fluently rattled off "LGBTQIAP2+" without stumbling, and then easily defined each term. In case you're wondering whether kids can "handle" queer themes in books and life.
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I just won a Newbery honor and the Stonewall award(again) and all I can come up with is "Newstoneberywall." I'm so honored and grateful to everyone who let my book about trans youth and the beloved dead into their hearts.
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Today I learned that when Patrick Ness submitted his glowing review of my book to the
@nytimes
, Pamela Paul made him change the opening paragraph.
Looking at the Opinion section and once again marveling over the fact that this terrible, hackneyed, boring writer was once the most important person in all of book publishing.
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10 years ago I started my new job as an elementary school librarian, and met with my supervisor to talk about my anxieties as a trans teacher. He told me that parents objecting to my presence were welcome to find another school, and I wish more administrators had that conviction.
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Transition does not fix your problems. Transition provides the foundation to address your problems, and hopefully work through them, which is a long and painful and messy process.
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This beloved old man—19!!—waited for us to wake up this morning and then passed at home, with us petting him goodbye. I'm heartbroken but grateful to have gotten the chance to love him.
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I'd like to establish a moratorium on books calling fat characters "surprisingly graceful," "unexpectedly delicate," and every other similar combination of descriptors.
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I'm in this FTM group on Facebook and every other question is "Does anyone else experience this extremely, extremely common thing" and while sometimes it bothers me it mostly makes me overwhelmingly sad that there's still so little easily accessible "common knowledge."
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I know it's bad to bait the transvestigators but I always want to post pictures of me with my short cis gay friends and be like "guess who!!"
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Also, just gotta say: being a school librarian today means that I got to put the Stonewall Award sticker on my own book. Honor/privilege/joy/all the rest.
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For years I suspected that living with a partner was like having a really fun sleepover with your favorite person every night and I was right.
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My brain keeps saying "mustn't cross the picket line of the
@nytimes
, a newspaper straightforwardly laying the intellectual groundwork for trans extermination" and I don't like it in here.
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@ErinInTheMorn
You "stole that name from a little girl" is the funniest thing to complain about, oh my god.
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Just remembering the time some kindergarteners were debating whether or not I could wear nail polish since I was a boy, and I said that I could do whatever I wanted, and a child solemnly informed me that I couldn't go into lava.
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The governor of Florida used an image from my book to justify that bill and the voices of my ancestors who fled the pogroms are screaming in the back of my head. "He knows your name," they're warning me.
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A college friend described "Barbie" as extremely 2006 Barnard, which makes sense since that's when we both graduated alongside Greta Gerwig and Kate McKinnon.
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When I read that article advocating for people to be denied medical transition till the age of 26, I imagined those extra three years of being in purgatory, in a holding pattern, of the misery of being not okay but also fine, of being kept from your own life.
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The insidiousness of their agenda is enraging. I'm embarrassed that I ever hoped for recognition from this fascist-laundering rag (but am still grateful to Patrick for his review).
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My response to the Eanes school district letter about "Call Me Max":
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But all I can think of is that I love who I am, and I hate where we're going.
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"Are you the first trans person to do that or are you the first trans person to write a widely-circulated article calling yourself the first trans person to do that"
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He had wanted to firmly place my novel in the context of the current political attacks on trans people, but she instructed him to revise it into "something less political 'and more focused on the book.'"
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Then I started T, and suddenly I didn't want to be removed from my body or my life. Suddenly I had to feel things. Suddenly I had to be fully alive.
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But I knew that wasn't true. I knew that without transition, I would be in a holding pattern forever. I would be keeping myself away from problems, instead of going through them and coming out the other side.
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There's so much more to say about this, about the dignity of risk, about allowing teenagers to injure themselves playing sports or take out burdensome debt, about how every life includes regrets and mistakes, and how part of being alive is coming through.
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A young trans person yesterday asked how I captured details of his life so well in my book when I hadn't even met him, and I told him it's because I know my community, and that he's connected to a real culture even if he feels alone right now.
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I had always a lot of serious mental health issues simmering gently in the back of my mind. I could mostly ignore them and was mostly okay, because I was so far removed from my body and my life that I was puttering around like a robot.
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As a community elder I'm canceling trans day of visibility and replacing it with trans day of find me a boyfriend.
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I can't imagine how much harder my life would be if I had to start it three years later. The three years between coming out and starting T were bad enough that they warp in my mind, elongated beyond the count of their days.
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You could have pointed to the hormones and say "See? You're clearly not trans. This is making you worse. Informed consent is a mistake, detransition immediately."
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And so everything got worse. Like a clear glass of water with muck at the bottom. When you stir it, all you can see is the muck.
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I wasn't really okay. I was in a holding pattern, a kind of purgatory. I would never really be okay, but I could keep everything at bay so it never got that bad. I could have stayed there forever.
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This cis gay I know told me it was "so powerful" that me and some of my trans guy friends got a house on Fire Island last year...like girl we just barbecued a lot and watched a screener of "Adam," the personal is political but not this time.
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My most-banned book has been out for 4 years--the advance was less than $10,000 ($2500/book for 3 books), and it hasn't earned out yet despite being on stage with D*Santis and getting on local and national news multiple times. Anyone saying that bans boost sales owes me a drink.
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I dropped out of law school after 6 weeks, and was hospitalized with a life-threatening eating disorder, which had always been there, and bad, but it had never gotten bad enough for me to make it better.
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@toastieboy_boo
My first T shot was in the healthcare clinic and I was like "Am I going to grow a beard tomorrow (lol/jk)" and the nurses, talking among themselves, were like "I bet she gets a beard in a few months" like....ok
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@AndyEyeballs
Hopefully as expressions of care rather than power and control like some queer house dads I have known
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I know these people are hatemongers operating in bad faith but this article argues that my picture book is legally obscene and I just couldn't let that go so I wrote them a letter.
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Everyone is coming up with ways to honor Beverly Cleary and I think I'm gonna squeeze out a whole tube of toothpaste. May her memory be for a blessing.
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I've decided to give up on being a full-time author and go back to being a school librarian for the express purpose of not acquiring this book for my collection.
A Sequel to ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ will be published this year. It’s controversial |
@lithub
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I once joined a book club with transsexuals in their early/mid 20s & generation gaps are so intense among our people! Most of them hadn't heard of top surgery parties & were like "why didn't he just start a GoFundMe" as if GoFundMes are eternal and exactly as much fun as a party.
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I just got a handwritten letter from a ten-year-old trans girl who said that "Different Kinds of Fruit" is her favorite book, and included her love of pickles as a sidebar "fun fact." I have the best job.
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Happy fifteen years on testosterone to me, I'm very happy that I transitioned into "hirsute and effeminate."
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wow the first time two trans men have been on the cover of this magazine
I love everything about this cover. Daniel's "Yes this is a magazine shoot" paired with Elijah's "Look who I ran into at Starbucks!!!" energy is *chef's kiss*
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Ok I am overall quite pleased with this!
Today is Transgender Day of Visibility and we’re spotlighting
@KyleLukoff
, an award-winning author with a power message of acceptance. 📚
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Three years ago today
@rickriordan
accepted the Stonewall award, and I was on that committee! Now I'm a Stonewall winner and...well, there's no hotel breakfast, but at least I have the memory of danishes.
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I've been seeing a lot of "Drag is not a crime <3" posts and it's worth remembering that crime is a social construct and anything/everything could be a crime if your local law enforcement, courts, and legislature decide that it is <3
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If this gets, idk, 100 likes, I'll tweet out the email I sent Pamela Paul last week.
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"It is too much of a legal risk to have a transgendered person in the library" my blood is boiling.
At 11:14 am June 1 I received an email from an apologetic library employee who informed me Chief Executive JP Gallagher and County Attorney Eileen Joyce "have decided that it is too much of a legal risk to have a transgendered person in the library. I really regret this.” (sic)
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If my boyfriend and I deadname each other on Fire Island will our vacation pass the Bechdel test?
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transphobic to expect me to participate in a freelance-job zoom call and also change my sheets and write a check for health insurance and email my accountant about quarterly taxes on today, Elliottmas.
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Dreaming of the day that every scrappy punk/anarchist/feminist/radical bookstore has a robust children's section and at least one staff member who's well-read and passionate in that field.
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Literally watched the Stonewall announcement with a second-grader hanging over my shoulder asking if I could check out a book for him. Thank you everyone, WHAT A DAY.
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Can you imagine saying this to me and expecting me to be anything other than delighted? Yes I am an activist homosexual sought out by publishers and literary foundations, thank you so much for noticing 🥹
@KyleLukoff
You're not a judge because you read baby books, you are a judge because you are an activist homosexual.
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@nicodellafabs
A random middle school girl saw me holding hands with a boy I was dating. It was June, so she clapped gleefully and said, "Pride!!!"
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Now that I have calmed down slightly, please enjoy this text from my brilliant and poised agent
@agentsaba
, who was so excited she text-yelled "STONEWALL OLUS BEWBERRY HONORNFUCK", I have not stopped giggling.
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Happy anniversary to the best thing I've ever written! A friend asked if this was a joke or if I was interested in matchmaking; I said "Both?" and I'm moving in with my match tomorrow.
As a community elder I'm canceling trans day of visibility and replacing it with trans day of find me a boyfriend.
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have you heard the good news about HRT
“I want to do the gayest fucking thing you’ve ever seen in your life,” Kristen Stewart says in Rolling Stone’s new cover story.
“If I could grow a little mustache, if I could grow a fucking happy trail and unbutton my pants, I would.”
Read:
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I just got the edits for a short story I wrote for a
@HarperCollins
anthology, and will be withholding the final draft until the
@hcpunion
strike is resolved. A lot of my author friends are also on the contributors list, and I hope they do the same.
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I was being sneaky!!!! It turns out that I actually won the Children's Literature Lecture award, which, despite the fact that I am calling it "the homework award," is a tremendous honor that I can't believe I was chosen for.
The Youth Media Awards are tomorrow, and it's a nice change of pace to not be worried about whether or not I'll win anything, because as much as I love the one picture book I had out this year I don't think it's in any runnings.
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This article is hugely upsetting and I don't know why this one line is sticking with me so much: "After an hour of discussion, the board decided to add language to make the language more specific to ensure books that depicted "tomboy" characters would not be relocated."
Greenville County Public Libraries voted to MOVE ALL CHILDREN'S BOOKS WITH TRANS CHARACTERS OUT OF THE CHILDREN'S AREAS and they're now only going to be available to adults or minors who have a card saying they can access them.
*PUBLIC* library.
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Did I go to some "no cis men" parties in my dissolute youth? Yes! Was I right to do so? No!
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An unpopular opinion I've had for a long time is that women's spaces/orgs/listservs/whatever don't actually have to be "women & [marginalized gender groups that aren't women]." It's okay to just be for women, so long as all women regardless of birth assignment are welcomed.
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The invitation referred to is from last summer, when I thought that a conversation with PP (given that we were somewhat colleagues) might do something to change her mind. Maybe I could have, but I bet I'd've just turned into more column fodder.
If this gets, idk, 100 likes, I'll tweet out the email I sent Pamela Paul last week.
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@KwameHolmes
I personally think it's okay to just say "women," with the knowledge that that includes all women regardless of birth assignment.
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"If you had to take a survey would you say you were bald or not bald?"--a child who noticed my bald(ing) spot and wanted to have a conversation about it.
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Uhhh NYC covid cases have been around 5K per day for awhile and yesterday there were 20K recorded? Excuse me?
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The way publishing works is that many people had to read this book, knowing what is known about her, and say "This seems fine."
JK Rowling's latest book is about a murderous cis man who dresses as a woman to kill his victims
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Did you know that there's a scholarship available through
@Highlights
SPECIFICALLY for trans women and transfeminine people who want to write for young people? It's for emerging writers of picture books through YA, and you can apply today!
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ONE of these is a homophobic straight woman LARPing as a gay man.
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An independent school in the tri-state area, with a beautiful page on their website waxing eloquent about their commitment to DEI, just rescinded an invitation to have me speak to their middle school because of a small and angry group of transphobic parents.
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I learned that parents at an Austin school are calling for a teacher to be fired after reading "Call Me Max" to a class. I'd make a joke about cancel culture but don't feel very jokey right now.
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