BGSQD
BGSQD
How do our queer identities both complicate and creatively expand the family roles we have inherited? Brad Richard‘s Turned Earth explores who he is as a husband, mentor, and nurturer of the land, in the shadow of his mother’s death. In J Brooke‘s debut collection, I Can Tell You the Version That Will Make You Take My Side, they push against expectations of social class and ill-fitting girlhood to craft their own language for being a partner and parent. Jendi Reiter‘s Introvert Pervert grapples with violent American ideologies of the family, using both satire and tenderness to depict how they and their loved ones have grown through their gender transition.
To reserve a copy of any of the featured titles please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve book(s) for March 22 event” in the subject line, and let us know which of the titles in the body of the email
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This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
The Bureau will solicit donations at the beginning of the event—we especially encourage donations from those who do not plan to purchase any books.
All are welcome to attend, with or without a donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register or on Venmo @BGSQD
J Brooke‘s full-length poetry book, I Can Tell You the Version That Will Make You Take My Side, is forthcoming in 2026 from Driftwood Press. The collection won the Editor’s Choice Prize at Driftwood and was a Finalist for Ashland Press’s 2025 Richard Snyder Poetry Prize. Brooke has received two Pushcart Prize nominations and a 2025 Best of the Net nomination, and was a Finalist for the 2025 Iowa Review Nonfiction Prize. Their autobiographical essay “HYBRID” won Columbia Journal’s 2020 Special Issue Nonfiction Award. They have work in The Rumpus, Electric Lit, The Normal School, The Sun, Maine Review, Harvard Review and elsewhere. Brooke is Prose Book Reviews Editor at The Rumpus, former Nonfiction Editor at Stonecoast Review, and former guest faculty at USM (where they received an MFA in 2019).
About the book:
J Brooke’s fiercely political and tender exploration of their American trans experience, I Can Tell You the Story 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.
Brad Richard‘s books include Turned Earth (Louisiana State University Press, 2025), Motion Studies (The Word Works, 2011; 2nd expanded edition, 2025), Butcher’s Sugar (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012), and Parasite Kingdom (The Word Works, 2019). He has also published several chapbooks, including In Place (Seven Kitchens Press, 2022). A 2015 Louisiana Artist of the Year and 2002 winner of the Poets & Writers Exchange Award in Poetry (selected by Reginald Shepherd), he taught creative writing to talented high school students in New Orleans for twenty-eight years. A faculty member of the Kenyon Review Writing Workshops and an independent teacher and editor, he lives, writes, and gardens in New Orleans.
About the book:
Turned Earth, Richard’s fifth collection, offers a portrait of the artist as a grieving son who is also a husband, teacher, gardener, and attentive witness to our precarious world. Navigating life after his mother’s death, the speaker uses memory and imagination to understand, as one poem’s title declares, “How I Came to This.” Tender and trenchant, elegiac yet often livened by humor, Richard’s poems affirm the sustaining power of hope and love.
Jendi Reiter is the author of the novels Origin Story and Two Natures, both from Saddle Road Press; the short story collection An Incomplete List of My Wishes (Sunshot Press); and five poetry books and chapbooks, including Made Man and Bullies in Love, both from Little Red Tree Publishing. Their awards include a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship for Poetry, the New Letters Prize for Fiction, the Oscar Wilde Poetry Prize from Gival Press, and two awards from the Poetry Society of America. They are the editor of WinningWriters.com, an online resource for markets and contests for creative writers. They live in Western Massachusetts with their husband and son and an extroverted cat.
About the book:
Introvert Pervert, published by The Word Works in 2026, uses news stories, humor, and the surreal to depict parenting with childhood trauma, how a long-term marriage shifts to accommodate gender transition, and the irony of political rhetoric casting queer people as a threat to children, juxtaposed with the real threats of climate change and gun violence.