KT Hoffman is originally from Beaverton, Oregon, and currently lives in Brooklyn. He received his bachelor’s degree in English and Creative Writing from Stanford University. If he isn’t writing about trans hope and gay kissing, he’s probably white-knuckling his way through the ninth inning of a Seattle Mariners game. The Prospects is his debut novel.

I had the opportunity to interview KT, which you can read below.

First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself? 

Thank you! My name is KT. I am a passionate fan of the Seattle Mariners—one time, when I was waking up from anesthesia, I have been told the first thing I said was, “The Mariners play later today.” (They did, and they lost, 4–3, to the Detroit Tigers.)

I am also a gay, trans writer from Beaverton, Oregon.

What can you tell us about your debut book, The Prospects? What was the inspiration for this story?

The Prospects is a romantic comedy that follows Gene Ionescu, the first transgender player in professional baseball, and his former college teammate, Luis Estrada, who just got traded to Gene’s minor league team. In an effort to get their team to the playoffs, the two have to get used to playing together again, and, in the process, rediscover their friendship and long-buried feelings for each other.

To me, more than anything, this is a book about hope, and about wanting the things you’ve been told people like you are not allowed to want—whether that’s love, or belonging, or some wild, unlikely, big-league dream. I fell in love with baseball the same year I started coming out as trans, so baseball to me has always been very linked to those terrifying, exhilarating, leap-of-faith moments when you let yourself reach for something that seems impossible. Writing about a trans baseball player felt very natural—I don’t think I could have written anything else at that time.

Since the book is centered around baseball, I was wondering if you have any personal connections or memories about sports that you would like to mention?

So, I never played or even followed baseball until I was an adult. I was a soccer kid! But I had this fourth grade teacher who was obsessed with the Mariners. He is a huge part of why I ended up following the Mariners specifically when I started watching baseball. He was one of the best teachers I have ever had, for many reasons. He cared so much. It’s so interesting to me that it’s his love for the Mariners that maybe changed my life more than anything else in his class. It’s a nice reminder of what a difference it can make just to share your enthusiasm and joy with people.

As a writer, what drew you to the art of storytelling, specifically romance? 

I have never been especially good at vocalizing my experiences, so being able to process that stuff through story has always been invaluable to me. Storytelling is very much the lens through which I see the world, both on a general and a personal scale.

I stumbled into romance by accident, though! I didn’t grow up reading it—I was too busy hiding in the aisles at the library, trying to get through every queer book I could find before someone could see what I was reading. Like a lot of queer readers, though, I read Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue in 2019 and sort of realized, oh—this genre could be for people like me, if we pushed it to be. I wanted to read books where queer, trans people could do more than be an object of derision, pity, or illicit desire—books where we got to love and be loved.

How would you describe your writing process?

For first drafts, I set a lot of impossible deadlines for myself, with overly ambitious daily word count goals, and then have to adjust those goals over and over. Drafting is kind of a months-long bartering process with myself, honestly.

I also think my books tend to come into themselves in revisions. There’s only one line that made it through from the very first draft of The Prospects to the last, and I think that sums my process up. I do really love that one line, though, so that first draft wasn’t a waste!

Growing up, were there any stories in which you felt touched by/ or reflected in? Are there any like that now?

Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s Aristotle & Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe completely changed how I viewed queer literature. That was really the first time I got to read a book about characters whose queerness felt recognizable to me. You can tell he absolutely adores the people he writes about, and that he respects and holds space for their sadness and happiness in equal measure. What a beautiful, unique thing to do as an author.

In the romance space—Anita Kelly! Every one of their books is phenomenal. I read Love & Other Disasters at such a pivotal moment in my writing life, and seeing a trans character as a romantic lead was legitimately life-changing for me. Every time I get to read their writing, it feels like such a gift.

I also feel like I have to mention Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (apparently I like books with ampersands in the title), which I read my sophomore year of college and have re-read almost every year since. Sammy Clay is a trans man, and I’ll die on this hill.

As a writer, who or what would you say are some of your greatest creative influences and/or sources of inspiration in general? 

For this book specifically, I took a lot of inspiration from Lookout Landing, which is a Mariners news site. Sports journalism can often be quite dry, but the writing staff at Lookout Landing bring such personality and insightfulness to their pieces. Where else am I going to read a well-researched, thoughtful piece about my favorite fringe utility player, as told through cleverly referenced Death Cab for Cutie song titles!

I like to listen to narrative podcasts—especially tabletop roleplaying podcasts—particularly when I’m drafting, because they have this sense of playfulness and improvisation that reminds me that you can take big swings with a story and let it take you places you didn’t expect. I re-listen to The Adventure Zone: Balance at least once a year. It’s a masterclass in character development, and in allowing yourself to be completely absurd while also accessing those big, sweeping emotions. It uses the absurdity as an entrance point to the big emotions, which I think is also very much what the best romantic comedies do.

Finally, personal essays and memoir are my favorite genres to read when I’m stuck in my own writing. There is something so generous about the way essayists write. The ability to turn something intimate and extremely personal into a piece that says something broader is such a skill, and one that I think novelists can learn a lot from. Some of my favorite writers in this space are Sabrina Imbler, Lamya H, Hanif Abdurraqib, Samantha Irby, and John Paul Brammer.

What are some of your favorite elements of writing? What do you consider some of the most frustrating and/or challenging? 

My favorite element of writing itself is to fiddle with a paragraph, a sentence, a word, or a comma until the punch is landing exactly where you want it. When you’re writing a novel, every moment can’t necessarily be that. Some sentences just need to tell you where someone’s hand is, or how the characters got from home to work. But some moments get to be poetry, and I love those moments.

The most challenging part of writing, to me, is shutting out the voice that tells me all the ways my writing could be misunderstood. I often have to remind myself that art is meant for interpretation, so not everyone is going to read my writing the way I meant it—it can be frustrating, but also, that’s the beauty of sharing your work! Sometimes people do really get it, or they see something in it that even I didn’t.

Many authors would say one of the most challenging parts of writing a book is finishing one. What strategies would you say helped you accomplish this?

Deadlines! I absolutely could not, would not ever finish writing anything if I didn’t have some kind of structure. Though, I will say—I find finishing a book comparatively easy. It’s slogging through that middle chunk that kills me!

Aside from your work, what are some things you would want others to know about you?

I consider myself amongst the world’s biggest Orville Peck fans. I don’t have a tattoo or a cowboy costume or anything, but I do think I have listened to Bronco more than maybe any other human on this planet. Ask me about the voice crack in “Let me Drown”! THAT’S ART!

What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet but that you wish you were asked (as well as the answer to that question)?

I really want to be asked about that voice crack in “Let me Drown.”

Okay, I’m mostly kidding. I’m always happy when I get to talk about niche writing choices, because I overthink everything! But today I’ll ask myself: KT, how do you choose names for your characters?

I’m so glad you (I) asked. Gene and Luis’s names honestly just sound nice together, and their last names were picked in part for nicknaming purposes. Vince Altman was just the most Baseball Guy™ name I could think of. But I named Vince’s husband Jack because “a jack” is a slang term for a home run. I thought it was really funny to have a pitcher whose spouse is named after a home run.

What advice might you have to give for other aspiring writers?

I think that in any genre, but especially in romance, you should try falling in love with your characters a little! I daydream about my characters all the time, and when I’m really in a book, I look for pieces of them everywhere. I imagine how they’d respond to the little things I see or experience every day. I have whole folders on my phone of pictures or memes or whatever that remind me of them—to me, it makes them feel real, like friends I could call up and chat with while I run errands.

Are there any other projects you are working on and at liberty to speak about?

I am drafting my second book at the moment—quite literally, I’m sitting next to my word count tracker as I answer these questions. I can’t say much about it just yet, but it’s another romantic comedy with a gay, trans lead. This one is not about baseball, though! (Not yet, at least. I’m sure I’ll find a way to sneak it in there somehow.)

Finally, what books/authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT? 

Any of the books/authors I’ve mentioned up to this point, of course, but I’ll take this chance to shout out some baseball romance specifically! I highly recommend Alicia Thompson’s The Art of Catching Feelings, which will be out on June 18 of this year. That book is so special, and I think really captures the tension and release of baseball in a genuinely masterful way. Alicia never misses! And you can’t go wrong with KD Casey’s Unwritten Rules trilogy. I love the way KD interweaves their books with each other, and how queer people are so much a part of the fabric of their baseball world. Also, KD is just so smart about this sport, it blows my mind.