J Brooke will share poems from their USA Today bestselling debut collection, listed by Ms. Magazine as one of the best poetry collections of 2026, a book that delivers candid commentary on a unique gender journey. This event is presented in partnership with PFLAG Dorset.

"Funny and surprising, a real gem." - comedian Hannah Gadsby

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.

"The poems found in I Can Tell You the Version That Will Make You Take My Side are as intentional and full-bodied as the poet who penned them. J Brooke is a truth-teller with a gift for precise storytelling who walks the reader through the dark and light spaces of a life evolving, becoming anew." - Amanda Johnston, 61st Texas Poet Laureate

PFLAG DORSET formed in 2010 as a response from concerned community members – parents and friends of the LGBTQ+ community. Since 2010 PFLAG Dorset has been providing Vermont with a forum for learning, advocacy and support for our LGBTQ+ friends and family. PFLAG provides opportunity for dialogue about sexual orientation and gender identity, and acts to create a society that is healthy and respectful of human diversity.

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.