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"Becoming Nicole"

The Transformation of an American Family

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Amy Ellis Nutt relates the journey of discovery of an ordinary American family as they learn to love, understand, and fight for their transgender child.

In 2012, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Amy Ellis Nutt began reporting on a ordinary, middle class family from rural America – with one exception: one of their identical twin sons, at the age of about two, began identifying as a girl. Published in 2015, “Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of An American Family,” is a book about gender identity, transgender rights, community, and, above all, a family tested beyond what they could ever imagine. It’s also a book steeped in the history of transgenderism, putting Nicole’s story into a larger cultural and medical context. How the family responded, eventually embracing their son as a daughter, Nicole, lies at the heart of this story.

Granted wide-ranging access to Nicole’s family, personal diaries, home videos, clinical journals, legal documents and medical records, Amy Ellis Nutt spent almost four years reporting this immersive account of an American family confronting an issue that is at the center of today’s cultural debate. “Becoming Nicole,” a New York Times Notable Book of 2015,  will resonate with anyone who’s ever raised a child, felt at odds with society’s conventions and norms, or had to embrace life when it plays out unexpectedly.

Amy Ellis Nutt was awarded the Pulitzer in feature writing for her series, “The Wreck of the Lady Mary” published by The Star-Ledger. In 2014, Ellis Nutt joined the Washington Post as a science writer. 

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