‘As if Percy Jackson were trans and Jewish’: Kyle Lukoff on imagination, autonomy, and ‘A World Worth Saving’

A conversation with author Kyle Lukoff (BC ’06) about his newest middle-grade novel and recent National Book Award nomination. 

Photo provided by Marvin Joseph

By Abigail Rabbitt

October 31, 2025

When asked to describe his newest middle-grade novel, “A World Worth Saving,” author and Barnard alum Kyle Lukoff does not hesitate: “The easiest blurb for it is that it’s as if Percy Jackson was trans and Jewish,” he laughs. “I feel like I should come up with a more serious and literary blurb now that it’s been shortlisted for the National Book Award, but I don’t want to.” 

The book, which follows a trans boy who discovers a golem built to protect him, merges Jewish mythology, fantasy, and struggles with transphobia and self-definition. Lukoff’s use of humor is deceiving because his stories carry a deep ethical weight. His work insists that children are not passive recipients of care or direction but autonomous beings capable of knowing, choosing, and imagining for themselves. “My fundamental belief is that children are human beings who get to make their own choices,” he explains. “The complicated ethics around that — balancing future well-being against present happiness — is at the core of what I do. Not just when it comes to whether trans kids exist and what kinds of medical care they should be allowed to access and when.” 

Before becoming an award-winning author, Lukoff spent years as an elementary school librarian, intermittently publishing short stories and writing picture book manuscripts. As a children’s librarian, Lukoff struggled firsthand with parents and teachers concerning the ability of children to pick out their own books. “I saw the rights of my students as pretty much my number one job,” he says. “Everything I did in the library was aimed at keeping that relatively sacrosanct.”  

Now, writing books for and about queer and trans children, Lukoff carries that commitment to protect through his work. “A World Worth Saving” covers complicated and important topics of domestic transphobia, conversion therapy, and the resilience of queer youth. Creating a pastiche of contemporary social realities, Lukoff uses mythology to reflect and combat transphobia. 

Originally, he had not set out to make any grand statement through myth or fantasy, but on rereading the book, he noticed an underlying deeper meaning. “I realized the book is very much about how hurt people hurt people, and that suffering doesn’t automatically make you a better person.” Lukoff’s mythology draws entirely from Jewish folklore, a deliberate choice. “I wanted it to be as Jewish a book as I could make it,” he says.

Lukoff graduated from Barnard in 2006 with a degree in American studies. Reflecting on his time there, he remembers being “so happy to be in New York City,” taking as many classes as possible and joining student groups nearly every night. “I think in some ways I would have become who I am no matter where I went to college,” he says, “but Barnard shaped me just because of the people I was around and the classes I took. Who can really say what stays with you the rest of your life?” 

After college, writing found him almost by accident. “I wrote my first picture book manuscript not too long after graduating,” he says. “It was just a slow process that eventually turned into a whole-ass career.” 

Now, that “whole-ass career” includes a National Book Award nomination, a growing catalog of acclaimed children’s books, and plans for an adult novel someday. Lukoff started writing his first novel during an idle summer in 2012 before starting a new job. “I wanted to write a young adult novel about a trans boy because there weren’t any bi trans men. That was my first real attempt at writing towards the goal of getting published.” Although writing for fun, he dreamt of becoming a famous trans young adult author someday. “I mean, jokes on me is that I became a famous picture book author and then a famous middle-grade author.” Lukoff’s first young adult novel will come out next year. 

His standing writing routine is as simple as it is effective. “So I wake up, I have breakfast. I open my laptop for about two hours, and then I stop working for the rest of the day.” He then spends the rest of the day thinking about it and jotting down notes on a blank email draft. “People sometimes are like, ‘How do you write a whole book?’ And I’m like, you just do it,” Lukoff says. “If you write a thousand words a day, in two months you have a 60,000-word draft. Two months is nothing — that’s no time at all.” 

Still, despite his discipline and dedication to his writing, Lukoff resists the idea that authors should dictate meaning. “It’s everyone else’s job to have feelings, and it’s their job to decide what feelings they want to hold on to. That’s also the autonomy thing. I don’t need to tell you what to think or feel.” Just as he resists telling readers how to interpret his work, Lukoff resists telling them what to read, preferring to leave that task to librarians, independent booksellers, and the readers themselves.  

Lukoff’s belief in autonomy, a value rooted in his years as a school librarian where protecting students’ freedom was central to his work, is present throughout “A World Worth Saving.” The adventurous tale puts the power back into the hands of queer children, embodying Lukoff’s work as a writer and an educator. The novel’s golem might protect its young hero, but it is his choices, imagination, and self-knowledge that make his world worth saving. On imagination, Lukoff says, “have you even tried to stop imagining? You literally can’t do it. So you may as well harness it toward a specific goal.” As Barnard students, constantly balancing intellect with performance and achievement, it is important to remember the role of imagining as a tool for asserting autonomy and shaping the kind of world we want to live in.