Discovering and Embracing Identity, an Author Talk with J Brooke at Essex Library Association

Join us for an author talk with J Brooke at Essex Library, as they discuss their book of poetry, I Can Tell You the Version That Will Make You Take My Side. J Brooke’s talk will explain their writing process, as well as how they navigated the publishing system, with an excerpt reading and time for questions. This program is free and open to the public.

About I Can Tell You the Version That Will Make You Take My Side USA TODAY BESTSELLER J Brooke’s I Can Tell You the Version That Will Make You Take My Side begins in a rich and specific New York City childhood full of binaries, then catapults into a fully realized, self-aware adulthood where the speaker experiences parenting, a breast cancer scare, and the complicated questioning of top-surgery.

About J Brooke J Brooke’s work is known for exploring gender, family, and the incendiary combination of the two. With this, their first book, they deliver candid commentary on a unique gender journey. Born intrinsically male, assigned female at birth, and raised in affluent dysfunction in New York City, their gender expression attempted male, cis straight female, and cis gay female before embracing a nonbinary identity. Living without surgical or hormonal interventions, their struggle to find authentic place traverses female anatomy, friendship, suicide, family, testosterone, politics, packers, social media, motherhood, royalty, natural phenomena, cancer, marriage, and the pope. Brooke is Prose Reviews Editor at The Rumpus, and lives in New England with their beautiful spouse Beatrice.