Prominent trans advocate and Columbia College Chicago alum Precious Brady-Davis ’13, who graduated from Columbia College with an Interdisciplinary BA in Theatre and Liberal Education, has written a memoir, I Have Always Been Me, which is being published July 1, 2021. To order the book on Amazon, click here.

The book is being published by Topple Books, an imprint of Amazon Publishing. Topple’s editor is former Columbia College film and video program student Joey Soloway, Emmy Award-winning creator of the Amazon television series Transparent. Topple specializes in works by women of color as well as writers who identify as queer and/or gender nonconforming.

Brady-Davis — who came to Chicago from Lincoln, Nebraska, to study at the Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department — writes about releasing the past and living the dream in her autobiography, reflecting on a childhood of neglect, instability, and abandonment and sharing her profound journey as a trans woman now fully actualized, absolutely confident, and precious. In the book, she speaks to anyone who has ever tried to find their place in this world and imparts the wisdom that comes with surmounting odds and celebrating on the other side. Brady-Davis and her book are featured as part of the inaugural year of the Chicago Reader Book Club in September 2021.

The Chicago Tribune praised the book as “a blunt, often revealing memoir” that’s “sure to be a summer breakout.”

Brady-Davis, who currently serves as the associate regional communications director at the Sierra Club, served for three years as the assistant director of diversity recruitment initiatives at Columbia College Chicago, implementing the campus-wide diversity initiative and providing leadership and oversight of national diversity recruitment and inclusion policy initiatives. She also served as the youth outreach coordinator at the Center on Halsted in Chicago, the largest LGBTQ community center in the Midwest. During her tenure there, she launched a $1.6 million CDC HIV prevention grant, which provided outreach, education, youth programming, and testing services to more than 3,000 young African American and Latinx gay, bi, and trans youth. Brady-Davis and her husband, Myles Brady, live in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, where they are raising their daughter, Zayn. The couple were profiled in a 2015 RedEye article, “Finding Acceptance, Love: A Chicago Transgender Couple’s Story.”