Q & A with Eli Sachse

We catch up with the author of Next-Level Ally: How to Support Your Queer and Transgender Friends, now in paperback!

Eli Sachse, BSN, RN is a queer, transgender artist, author, and activist. He is the founder of LGBTQ Merced, GLSEN Merced, and the Merced Pride Center at the MAC. He has worked as a freelance writer for MyHealthTeam.com and Sonoma Medicine, and is the author of the zines Sex Without Roles and Next-Level Ally.

We caught up with Eli just after the spring release of Next-Level Ally, once a best-selling zine, now a full-length paperback. Want to know how they became a writer, or started in advocacy work, or what their favorite book genre is? Keep reading!

What inspired you to write your book?

I’ve been organizing and advocating for queer and transgender people in my rural California community of Merced since 2018. Things that I’ve seen and experienced while trying to interface with local government, school systems, and allies of varying levels of commitment have been disorienting and mind-boggling, to say the least. So, some of this book was an exercise for me in deconstructing and understanding my own experiences. From gaslighting, to big promises that evaporate without a sound, to just plain rejection of ideas and plans by leadership, it’s been quite a journey.

For example, I worked for Merced County for two years. Near the end of those two years, I approached my director about starting a pride affinity group for county employees. She actually sent an email to me with a sentence in all-caps forbidding me from trying. I still have trouble understanding why she would feel so strongly against the idea. Starting an internal affinity group would not even necessarily even be visible to the public, ever. Where would any controversy come from? To me, it seems like the most low-stakes step towards pride activities possible. I still don’t see what she thinks the dangers are by allowing me to organize a pride group at work.

Alongside that, I’ve worked with people who have turned out to be meaningful allies, and continue doing real work and speaking up for queer and trans folks in my community. Thinking about how they approach the problem differently is just something I do naturally, so writing about it just made sense to me.

Also, being as visibly out as I am, I am approached by people of all walks of life and working in every industry for advice on how to better support queer and trans people. People quickly identify me as a kind ear to hear the questions they might be afraid to ask others, so talking with would-be allies has just become part of my life, for better or worse.

What was it like to publish with Microcosm?

Working with Microcosm has been such a delight since publishing my first zine with them in 2017, and then Next-Level Ally as a zine in 2020. When they approached me asking me if I would like to expand Next-Level Ally into a full-length book, I didn’t hesitate for a moment. I was elated, and the whole editing process was so supportive and helpful—the whole process was such a pleasure.

What else have you written?

As a registered nurse, I started out writing articles on medical subjects, first for Sonoma Medicine, then MyHealthTeam. At the same time, I started writing and self publishing zines on the trans experience, and selling and trading them at zinefests in the San Francisco Bay Area. I saw Microcosm Publishing tabling at some zine or comic event, honestly I can’t recall exactly where, and got the idea to pitch a zine to them at that time.

What was the submission/query process like for you?

As a writer, I haven’t had a huge amount of successful pitches yet, but Microcosm was interested in my ideas right away. I figure that’s because our values are well aligned. My original pitch being so long ago, I don’t remember much of the details, but I do know for sure that working with them over the last 8 years has been a total delight, with them always responding quickly to all my questions with compassion and patience.

What are you currently reading? 

With the state of the world as it is, I keep leaning ever further into pure escapism. I’ve been a serious sci-fi fan for pretty much forever, so it’s always represented in the books I’m reading. That said, I usually have 3-4 books or different genre going at any one time. So right now, I have bookmarks in the poems of Walt Whitman, a book on women painters in the 1950s called Ninth Street Women (fantastic), and a collection of sci-fi stories by Poul Anderson.

What’s the best book you read in the last year?

I think I have to say that The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke was among the best things I read this last year, but it is extremely hard to choose just one. The City and the Stars was apparently one of his first stories, and it was a total page-turner. I could not put it down. I have to mention The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu and Crooked Cucumber, a biography of Zen master Shunryu Suzuki, as runners up.

What’s next for you? 

Not totally sure. In my heart, I want to write more about sex and the trans experience in a poetic way, or in some kind of way that might not be easily publishable. I think I am going to explore that before working on something specifically for publication. Apart from writing, I do some background acting, painting and illustration, camping, traveling, and generally enjoying the heck out of life. 

Check out Next-Level Ally: How to Support Your Queer and Transgender Friends, out now on our site or wherever you buy your books!