Right Before Couple Starts IVF, Spouse Comes Out as Trans. 7 Years Later, They're Raising a Family

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Emily St. James and Libby Hill had been together for years when St. James came out as trans
After the initial shock — 'which lasted about 36 hours' — Hill says that things suddenly became much clearer
St. James, a successful writer like her wife, is drawing on her own trans experience for a comedic new novel, WoodworkingThe first thing you should know is that Emily St. James has always been Emily — it's just her outward appearance that has been a work in progress.
Adopted as a baby by South Dakota couple Gail and Mary, who also adopted Emily's sister, Jill, she grew up on the family farm, had a strong circle of friends, was a third-generation graduate of South Dakota State University and married at 22 to the love of her life.
What she saw in the mirror, however, did not match the person she knew she was on the inside.
The title of St. James' new book, Woodworking, refers not to carpentry but to being part of the woodwork itself. Going along to get along.
It's a position St. James, 44, knows well and so she put the problem squarely before her novel's main character, Erica: whether to continue hiding being trans or to, well... come out of the woodwork.
But St. James, a longtime journalist and critic-turned-novelist who transitioned in the middle of her career, wants to make one thing clear: She's written a comedy.
'When I talk about the book with people, the second they hear it's about trans people, they assume it's depressing," she tells PEOPLE. 'There's this thought that it must be about the struggle and the hardships, and I don't want to downplay them. But this is a book about people who love and care for each other. My intent is to be funny.'
The novel centers on 30something divorced high school teacher Erica, who presents as male to everyone around her despite being a transgender woman. Early in the book, she ponders coming out but fears losing friends, family and her career. Then she forms a bond with 17-year-old Abigail, a student at the school. Much ensues.
St. James says "everybody in the book is someone I have been or someone I wish I could be.'
Abigail, for example, is very much who St. James wishes she had been at 17: very snarky and doesn't suffer fools but with a huge heart and a private struggle. The school's earnest rich girl Megan, by contrast, is "who I was in high school — kind of chipper."
And Erica "is deeply informed by who I was when I first came out to myself at 37, although I've known my entire life I was trans,' St. James says.
St. James and her wife, Libby Hill, both grew up in Armor, S.D., close to Mitchell, where Woodworking is set. They've known each other since they were kids — first through mutual friends in high school. One of Hill's best friends was also a close pal of St. James.
With a smile, St. James recalls once asking their mutual friend "who's the funniest person, expecting her to answer me because I'm extremely funny — and she said, 'Libby.' Not acceptable.'
When they found out they would be attending the same college, St. James and Hill started hanging out more and discovered an immediate connection that soon enough turned to romance.
'The thing about Emily and I getting together when we [were young] ... is that we were both kind of drowning and we found each other and we made a little raft and we stayed afloat,' Hill, 44, also a journalist and writer, tells PEOPLE.
At the time, St. James was years away from coming out as trans or even acknowledging her identity to herself. Hill, too, says that she couldn't embrace her full identity in their community.
'Emily wasn't able to be herself," she says, "but neither was I.'
She and St. James had been together for years, and married since 2003, when, in 2018, St. James came out — just one week before Hill planned to start in vitro fertilization in their quest to have a child.
It was already going to be a trying time for the couple, which weirdly made it sort of a perfect moment for St. James' transition.
'When I came out to her, there were a lot of tears. It was very stressful,' St. James says. '[But] I was like, This woman cannot be pregnant and married to someone who's keeping this big of a secret from her.'
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After the initial shock — 'which lasted about 36 hours' — Hill says that things suddenly became much clearer. She compares it to getting the right prescription in her glasses. All "these perceived separations" looked a whole lot different.
'All I'd ever wanted was Emily. I'm never not going to love her with my whole heart, even if we're not together. That's just who we are,' Hill says. 'She's just the person I was waiting my whole life for. And I would've waited infinity times as long, I would've waited forever for her. And now I have her, and I'm never letting her go.'
Hill says wife transitioning was a clean slate for her, too.
"My sexuality wasn't something I questioned because that wasn't on the radar," says Hill, who now identifies as queer. "It was a slow burn recognizing I was bi, because I was in a committed relationship and it didn't feel important to own it."
She adds: "There was all of these things where I was able to let go of this version of myself that got married when she was 22."
Although Constance, Erica's wife in Woodworking is not based on Hill, she says she went through a lot of the same personal and professional struggles as that character.
'I felt directionless, I hadn't really pursued my dreams,'' Hill says.
Before St. James' transition, pieces of her true self — Emily — would always "peek through our relationship," Hill says. "That's how I fell in love. But she would go away, disappear and I could tell she was gone.'
That was a challenge, too. "I found my person, put a lot of energy in keeping us both alive, and when your partner walks away, sometimes you feel a little abandoned," Hill says.
There are still obstacles as their relationship continues to evolve and their family — now including their daughter, 2 — grows. But life is looking pretty good.
The couple moved to California in 2005, where they both worked for various major entertainment outlets. More recently, they transitioned to Hollywood screenwriting and are currently writing on the TV series Yellowjackets, which is set to air a fourth season.
St. James is working on a second book, although she says she has substantial concerns about the current political atmosphere, in which transgender rights have become a part of the culture war.
"What was so moving to me when Emily wrote this book — she wrote it very much for the people we grew up with. For a window into who we are, who queer people are, who trans people are," Hill says, "and they're just other humans."
In Woodworking, Erica's 'dead name' is grayed out — a stylistic choice reflecting a real-world tension: Most trans people don't want to be known by their former names, a point made several times in the novel.
Yet St. James says she has had a complicated relationship with that, given her increasingly notable career as a writer. Her name before her transition is a simple internet search away, often linked to pieces that helped her build her life now.
'There's a whole body of work that was published under that name and I certainly am proud of all that work,' she says.
Still, she says, 'I've been Emily long enough to know if people use the old name, they are doing it to be cruel.'
St. James says she was told there are four groups of people — with one being the worst — when it comes to how they interact with trans people.
'They are impolite rude jerks who are not going to treat you with the dignity and respect all human beings should be afforded,' she says. 'Those are the people you cut out of your life.'
The second group includes people who will use a trans person's correct name and pronoun not because they believe in it, but because they care about you.
'But deep in the back of their brains, they have this idea you're suffering from an extreme mental illness,' St. James says. 'And some of them we may have to cut out, but some you may be able to educate.'
The third group is where the vast majority of people fall, because they are the people who love you, they respect you. But they see you as two separate people, the one before and the one after.
'When they have their memories of that person and think of her as a man, I know they mean it from a place of great joy and memories of when I was a child or an adolescent,' St. James says, "yet there's pain because they never actually saw me. I was living not as myself.'
She says when she pictures herself in the past, it is as "Emily Little Girl" or "Emily Adolescent." Someone just waiting to be revealed.
And that brings us to bucket four, she says 'which is the people who understand I have always been Emily.'
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