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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.
The book is one of Ms. Magazine’s Best Poetry Books of 2026, won Driftwood Press’s Editor Choice Award, was Ashland Press’s2025 Richard Snyder Prize Finalist and is a USA Today Bestseller.
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.
This book talk will be moderated by Benjamin Adam Weiss, Program Director for The Meeting House. This event is presented by The Meeting House with support from Vermont Book Shop.
“A beautiful book of poetry following one human’s journey towards themselves, illuminating gender identity and the culture that surrounds us all—insightful and inspiring!”
— Rosie O’Donnell, Performer/Activist
“J Brooke’s I Can Tell You the Version That Will Make You Take My Side is a book of rare courage—one that refuses performance, explanation, or any version that might win easy sympathy. Instead, these poems stand in the full, contradictory glare of memory and body, and say: I am here, I will not simplify what I carry. What lingers isn’t a neat resolution but the stubborn dignity of survival—the daily, unspectacular ache of choosing to live honestly, with humor and care, even when the world demands a tidier answer. This is a collection that trusts the reader with what is unfinished and unfixable, and in doing so, offers something like hope—hope that we, too, might live inside our own contradictions and be seen.”
— Morgan Talty, Author of Night of the Living Rez: Stories & Fire Exit
First Congregational Church of Cornwall is a registered 501(c)(3) organization.
They accept tax-deductible donations towards this project.
