PHOTO: Steve Kluger, the author of beloved novels such as My Most Excellent Year and Last Days of Summer.
Unique Narratives, Personal Truths, And Unforgettable Fiction
Steve Kluger reflects on his passion for baseball, musical theatre, historical settings, and crafting inclusive characters, while offering insight into rejections, storytelling, and the creative process.
Steve Kluger is one of those rare storytellers who can distil both the profound and the whimsical into a single sentence. Whether exploring the earnest hopes of friendship, the trials of love, or the mounting tensions of a baseball game’s final inning, his voice carries an unmistakable blend of wit, nostalgia, and resilience. His works, from Last Days of Summer to Almost Like Being in Love, are not merely stories but heartfelt invitations—immersive journeys across an emotional landscape peppered with humour, humanity, and unabashed sincerity.
Central to Kluger’s artistry is his ability to weave personal experience into fiction, transforming intimate truths into universally resonant narratives. His passion for baseball is not just a recurring theme but a dynamic metaphor, underscoring struggles and triumphs that mirror life itself. Musical theatre, too, finds its way into his characters’ souls, enriching their worlds with rhythm and yearning. Yet what stands out is how Kluger consistently broadens the literary tapestry, bringing warmth and authenticity to LGBTQ+ characters and ensuring their stories are as vital—no more, no less—as any other thread.
To read Steve Kluger is to meet him halfway: to step into histories he reveres, moments he treasures, and relationships he celebrates. His works reveal an artist deeply attuned to the tales of ordinary lives rendered extraordinary by love, determination, and humour. Whether you are new to his writing or have long admired his craft, his creative world unfolds before you like the best of conversations—intimate, generous, and unmistakably genuine.
In My Most Excellent Year, how did your passion for musical theatre and baseball influence the characters’ development?
All of my novels are autobiographical in content. Alejandra is my sister-in-law, who came with her family from Mexico to New York, where she decided she wanted to appear in musical comedies (her audition song was “The Music and the Mirror”, and it was Alé who suggested that the one character she’d always wanted to play was Lilli in Kiss Me, Kate—which is how those elements made it into the novel); Augie is a Chinese American version of me at that age, and I needed a reason for he and Alé to bond—the musical comedy element was a natural bridge to that. And baseball bonded both T.C. and his father, and eventually T.C. and Alé.
What inspired the unique epistolary format in Last Days of Summer, and how did it shape the storytelling?
When I was 15, I read Bel Kaufman’s Up the Down Staircase and immediately knew that, for me, first-person narratives and different styles of achieving same were essential to effective storytelling.
Almost Like Being in Love blends romance and humour; how did you balance these elements to appeal to a broad audience?
Again, real life. Falling in love with my straight best friend during a high school production of Brigadoon really happened, and the whole experience was as funny (in retrospect) as it was romantic.
Your works often feature historical contexts, such as World War II; what draws you to these settings?
I really should have been born 20 years earlier: the music, culture, and energy of the World War II years have drawn me in ever since I was a child.
How did your experiences as a Red Sox fan influence the baseball themes in your novels?
The Red Sox are easily the American League’s most existential team, linking baseball to struggle, anguish and life’s vicissitudes as no other team can—which has always served as a subliminal metaphor for the storylines of the novels.
Can you discuss the challenges and rewards of writing LGBTQ+ characters in mainstream fiction?
There really are no challenges, except recognising that, except for gender, there’s no difference between the romantic lives of straight characters and LGBTQ+ characters. The rewards are watching readers embrace them—especially when those readers are teens and ’tweens.
What motivated the adaptation of Last Days of Summer into a musical, and how involved were you in the process?
People had been saying since 2006 that it was a natural for a musical. At first, I couldn’t see it—but given that I was the original musical comedy kid, I allowed myself to be talked into it. I was very involved in the process, as I wrote the script and the lyrics (the latter came as a complete surprise—nobody had ever told me I was a lyricist before).
What advice would you offer aspiring authors facing repeated rejections before achieving success?
If there are any specific notes, pay attention to them and see if they strike any chords. If not, discard them; the notes may pertain to someone else’s version of your book but not to the book you’ve written. And ignore anything along the lines of “That category of book doesn’t sell,” “It’s just charm, it has no teeth, and it’s too literal,” and “Nothing’s ever been written in that kind of style before—we wouldn’t know how to pigeon-hole it.” Last Days of Summer was rejected repeatedly for six years, after which my new agent had three houses bidding on it two weeks after she’d submitted it to them.
