Brooke Nevils, UNSPEAKABLE THINGS
About this Event
Brooke Nevils visits the store for her book Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe, a powerful and personal examination of our most persistent and dangerous misunderstandings, myths, and stereotypes about sexual harassment and assault.
In 2017, Brooke Nevils made a confidential HR complaint about one of the most powerful and familiar faces in media. Twenty-four hours later, the highest paid morning news anchor in history was fired, stunning millions of Americans in one of the MeToo era’s defining stories. Demanding answers—and the intimate details of the most personal and painful humiliation of her life—the press soon discovered her identity.
But hers was not the kind of black-and-white story the media knew how to tell. There’d been no explicit threats. She hadn’t screamed, fought, or gone to the police. Instead, she returned to her abuser again and again in a frantic attempt to “fix” an impossible situation that threatened her livelihood and the people closest to her. Yet as MeToo unfolded, Nevils learned that messy stories like hers were far from the exception, and that nearly everything she’d believed about sexual harassment and assault—and how victims react to it—was wrong. She began a yearslong effort to confront and understand her own experience, not simply as a woman reckoning with her past, but as a journalist confronting the critical questions that MeToo asked but ultimately left unanswered.
Through groundbreaking interviews with leading clinicians, forensic professionals, attorneys, and frontline researchers, Unspeakable Things challenges our understanding of consent, power, and the lingering, often misunderstood effects of trauma and shame. Despite its rarefied setting at the height of fame, power and American media, Nevil’s story serves as a textbook example of an all-too-common scenario that continues to devastate lives and enable abusers. This book is a powerful re-examination of everything we think we know, the start to a new conversation and—for anyone who has ever felt ashamed, hopeless, alone, and afraid—a light in the dark.
But hers was not the kind of black-and-white story the media knew how to tell. There’d been no explicit threats. She hadn’t screamed, fought, or gone to the police. Instead, she returned to her abuser again and again in a frantic attempt to “fix” an impossible situation that threatened her livelihood and the people closest to her. Yet as MeToo unfolded, Nevils learned that messy stories like hers were far from the exception, and that nearly everything she’d believed about sexual harassment and assault—and how victims react to it—was wrong. She began a yearslong effort to confront and understand her own experience, not simply as a woman reckoning with her past, but as a journalist confronting the critical questions that MeToo asked but ultimately left unanswered.
Brooke Nevils is an author, advocate and mother. Her book, Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame and the Stories We Choose to Believe (Viking, 2026), is a vital examination of our most persistent and dangerous misunderstandings, myths and stereotypes about sexual harassment and assault. Part memoir, part investigative journalism, Unspeakable Things weaves Brooke’s personal experience at the center of one of MeToo’s defining stories with groundbreaking interviews of leading clinicians, forensic professionals, attorneys and frontline researchers to challenge our understanding of consent, power and the lingering, often misunderstood effects of trauma and shame. Brooke began her career in print journalism before joining the NBCUniversal Page Program in 2008. First a talent assistant and later producer to NBC News anchor Meredith Vieira, her work at NBC included morning, evening and breaking news, primetime specials, news magazines, daytime talk, entertainment and longform news documentaries. In 2017, she made a confidential complaint to NBC News HR about one of the most powerful and familiar faces in media. Twenty-four hours later, the highest paid morning news anchor in history was fired, stunning millions of Americans. After her identity was revealed by a tabloid, Brooke left the network in 2018 and began a yearslong effort to confront and understand her own experience and the critical questions that MeToo asked but ultimately left unanswered. She learned that nearly everything she’d believed about sexual harassment and assault—and how victims react to it—was wrong. Despite its rarefied setting at the height of fame, power and American media, Brooke’s story serves as a textbook example of an all-too-common scenario that continues to devastate lives and enable abusers. A graduate of Johns Hopkins University, she lives with her husband and children in Maryland.
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