About the Author

Country of Under won a Next Generation Indie Book Award Grand Prize for Fiction and the 1729 Book Prize, judged by Diane Zinna. The novel was the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction runner-up and was shortlisted for Dzanc Books' Prize for Fiction and Black Lawrence Press’s Big Moose Prize. An excerpt won the Asheville Writers’ Workshop Fiction Contest. The novel was inspired, in part, by volunteer work with the New Sanctuary Coalition and Make the Road and the experience of organizing an immigrant artivist event at the Brooklyn Public Library with City University of New York DREAMers. An interview with subterranean explorer and artist Julia Solis for BOMB Magazine was also an inspiration.

Country of Under is a book that straddles borders, bringing together drag queens, nuns, activists, artists, and healers, because Brooke’s identity straddles borders. She is bisexual and grew up in a bicultural family, part Garza, part Shaffner, in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley—a 10-minute drive from Mexico. Her Garza grandfather was an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who dug ditches and harvested citrus fruit before putting himself through school to become a pharmacist. Her Shaffner grandfather was raised Mennonite and the first in his family to attend college. Brooke grew up praying at Pizza Hut and singing Christmas carols, with her hilarious prima Claris leading synchronized hand jives. Claris tried to become a nun, but was done in by the vow of silence. Brooke grew up cheering on drag pageants in her town’s only gay bar in the late 90s. Watching a friend perform drag, she understood what it was to be an artist—to throw open the borders of the known world. Brooke’s father became a quadriplegic when she was 10; at 23, she was diagnosed with the chronic illness primary sclerosing cholangitis; and at 37, she lost a love to cancer. She is at work on a memoir that explores living and loving in the face of radical uncertainty. An excerpt won the 2023 Lit/South Award, judged by Melissa Febos, appeared in Litmosphere, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  

Through her company Between the Lines, Brooke helps Latine and Southeast Asian teenagers to powerfully tell their stories in admissions and scholarship essays. The Rio Grande Valley students she’s worked with for 14 years keep her connected to the border and that incredible time of creating yourself as you leave home for college. She founded Freedom Tunnel Press with her partner Niteesh Elias to publish artivist books that straddle borders. She received her MFA from Columbia University, where she was a Dean’s Fellow. At Davidson College, she won the Charles Lloyd Writing Award. Brooke’s work has appeared in Scoundrel Time, The Rumpus, The Hudson Review, Marie Claire, BOMB, Litmosphere, Lost and Found: Stories from New York, Necessary Fiction, and Big Indie Books. She has been awarded artist grants from the Arts & Science Council, United States Artists, and the Constance Saltonstall Foundation and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Ucross Foundation, the Saltonstall Foundation, the Edward Albee Foundation, the Jentel Foundation, the I-Park Foundation, the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, and VCCA. Brooke is on the faculty of the North Carolina Writers' Network and Charlotte Lit.