Join us at Giovanni’s Room on Monday, July 6 from 6–7:30 PM for a queer coming-of-age evening with Ryan Schulte, author of I Dreamed I Saw Augustine, his debut novel from Rebel Satori Press.

Schulte’s self-described “masc disaster novel” follows Calvin, a young gay man navigating isolation, community, Brooklyn, 2015 political consciousness, queer dating, and the grumpy musicians of a Rolling Stones cover band. Funny, tender, and sharply observant, I Dreamed I Saw Augustine asks what it means to want a better world before you fully know how to live in one.

The evening will feature a book reading, live music, and an interactive conversation between Ryan Schulte and longtime friend and collaborator Jessica McNamara. Having survived high school drama productions and a high-stakes literary magazine together, Jess and Ryan will reunite for a wide-ranging discussion about fiction, theater, stage management, hometown politics, queer college loneliness, creative friendship, and the cultural supremacy of Derry Girls.

The event will also include a special live performance by Waltz Whitman, rounding out the night with music, conversation, and queer literary community.

Come for a reading, discussion, and performance celebrating queer storytelling, memory, friendship, drama, and the messy beauty of becoming.

Ryan Schulte is a community gardener with NYC Parks. His poetry and fiction have appeared in Oyez Review 51, Blood Orange, and elsewhere. He is a graduate of Macaulay Honors College at CUNY Hunter College and lives in Washington Heights, New York. I Dreamed I Saw Augustine is his first novel.

Jessica McNamara is a queer disabled producer and stage manager. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, they have worked at Goodspeed Musicals, Madison Lyric Stage, off-Broadway, and the Philly Fringe Festival. They are passionate about fostering a diverse and accessible artistic community and can likely be found at Tattooed Mom or Marsha’s.

Ryan Schulte: I Dreamed I Saw Augustine
Reading, Discussion & Live Music
With Jessica McNamara and a special performance by Waltz Whitman

July 6
6–7:30 PM
Giovanni’s Room
345 S. 12th St.
Philadelphia, PA

We are so excited to host Jibz Cameron aka Dynasty Handbag, as she shares her debut memoir, Hell in a Handbag.

Jibz will also be performing at PhilaMOCA on Wednesday, July 8. Tickets are available HERE! You really don’t want to miss either of these events.

In I Can Tell You The Version That Will Make You Take My Side, J Brooke writes about eventually finding the language for nonbinary (as an elder queer) after growing up in a world of tight aesthetics, manners, and expectations: the world of fifth avenue wealth. Complicated by the heightened expectations of gender, Brooke covets the littlest things: button fly pants, a middle part, their brother’s Timex watch glowing in the dark.

On this side, you’ll find Brooke trying on their father’s suit coats in secret, in a haze of their mother’s menthol smoke at Bergdorf’s, taken down 57th to get a nose job at eleven.

And on the other, in the packer short, in the flaccidity. In the testosterone between us. In Michelangelo’s sexuality, and in the erasure of T from the alphabet, in love–witty, acerbic, deadpan. What becomes of a person free from all that highly controlled dysmorphia? They affirm their gender everywhere.

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.

National Bestselling author J Brooke’s debut poetry book,  I Can Tell You The Version That Will Make You Take My Side, 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. Brooke’s other honors include Pushcart & Best of the Net nominations, The Iowa Review’s 2025 Nonfiction Prize Finalist, Columbia Journal’s 2020 Nonfiction Prize Winner. Their work appears in Electric Lit, McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, Harvard Review, and elsewhere. They are Poetry Editor at Trans Poetics Archive and the Book Reviews Editor at The Rumpus.