In more fantasy and sci-fi works, they’re always doing the real person AU. So I want to see the Best Woman vampire AU or superhero AU. Maybe fanfic about Julia, Kim, and Ben negotiating some kind of poly throuple situation. Or I would honestly love if people were really interested in one of the side characters. If someone wanted to write fanfic about Daytona Bitch, that would be amazing. Because she has a whole life. Honestly, there could be a spinoff about her. I’m probably not going to write it, but if someone else wants to on AO3, I would love that.
And I hope people take notes. As a whole, what do you hope people take away from the book?
Family can take many forms. It can be the family you’re born into, the family you choose and make along the way. Both can be as legitimate as the other. I would like trans people to feel seen by it and know that transition is not an experience with any kind of fixed ending. And that can feel really scary. But I actually think it’s really beautiful that we’re never done.
I hope that cis people who read it — who maybe have never talked to a trans person, don’t know a trans person, think they don’t know a trans person, because they probably do — can recognize that we’re here, we’re as deserving of romance and silliness and drama and escapism as anyone else.
Do you have any words of advice for other aspiring trans authors of fiction?
Write, write, write. Just write. We are still at the advent of trans fiction as a genre. Obviously there have been trans writers forever, but it does feel like now is this really exciting time of trans fiction. Just this year we’ve had books from Torrey Peters, Juno Dawson, Harron Walker, me, Grace Byron’s novel comes out soon. It’s so exciting that we are finally getting to tell our own stories and no one can tell our stories as well as we can, where our experiences are centered in those stories and are not incidental to the plots. These plots couldn’t happen without transness and that’s amazing. So write. Write the thing you think no one wants to read, write the thing that you are scared to show other people because it’s worth being written.
There’s so much opportunity for us to build the idea of what trans fiction is. It’s so exciting to be at the beginning of an art form, a discipline, a kind of literature. And we need more trans stories. If I could, I would love to read primarily work by trans authors. Those are the stories I get the most excited by. Write them so I can read them.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Best Woman is out now via Ballantine Books.
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