Elliot Kukla has been tending to grief, dying, and becoming (more) disabled since 2007, and has been engaged in justice work since 1996. His practice of radical spiritual care brings together these two streams of expertise with his lived experience of being a trans, non-binary, disabled, Diasporic Jew.

Elliot’s essays on grief and justice have been featured frequently in the New York Times as well as in Time Magazine, Teen Vogue, British Vogue, Them, The LA Times and many other places. His writing is included in numerous anthologies and university syllabi, and has been translated into Spanish, Korean, French and Japanese. In 2022, he was even a New Yorker crossword clue (April 12, 7 across).

In 2006, Elliot was the first openly transgender rabbi to be ordained by a seminary in Judaism (Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles). He is currently the founder and co-director of the Collective Loss and Adaptation Project (CLAP), a multi-religious project which uses art and media to honor the stigmatized and suffocated grief of disabled people.

Elliot’s first kid’s book, The Lazy Day, is upcoming from Abrams Books in 2026 and his first adult non-fiction book, Wild Grief, is upcoming from Schocken/Knopf in 2027.