Author Archives: Jennifer Finney Boylan

Twelve Sounds of Winter in Maine

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: January 26, 2012

You don’t survive in Maine very long if you don’t make peace with winter.   I love warm days and sunny skies as well as the next gal,  but I have to say I have come to love the heart of January in my home state.  After summer it may be my favorite time of [...]

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Stragglin’ with the Stragglers

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: January 24, 2012

So I’m in this new band, The Stragglers.  For She’s Not There and I’m Looking Through You readers, this is not the band I called “Blue Stranger” in those books; that band entered voluntary retirement in 2006.  I’ve been in about half a dozen bands since then, and been thrown out of every one.  I [...]

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The Fall of the House of Boylan

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: December 14, 2011

This coming weekend,  my spouse Deedie (“Grace”) and I will go down to Devon, Pennsylvania, to say goodbye to the house that my family has lived in for the last 39 years.  Since my mom’s death this July,  the family has been going about the necessary steps to sell the old house, and if all [...]

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“…to Slim Gaillard the whole world was just one big orooni.”–Jack Kerouac, ON THE ROAD

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: November 8, 2011

From ‘On The Road‘ by Jack Kerouac ‘Nobody knows where Slim Gaillard is’ ‘… one night we suddenly went mad together again; we went to see Slim Gaillard in a little Frisco nightclub. Slim Gaillard is a tall, thin Negro with big sad eyes who’s always saying ‘Right-orooni’ and ‘How ’bout a little bourbon-arooni.’ In Frisco [...]

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Four Tall Women

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: October 26, 2011

Here’s a photo I love, taken at the GLAAD Media Circle celebration earlier this month.  On hand were, from lower right, Amanda Simpson, US Department of Defense; Kimberly Reed, award-winning filmmaker;  Dr. Marci Bowers, surgeon; and Jennifer Boylan, Professor of English, me.  I know that there are all sorts of ways of being trans, and [...]

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JFB interview with Myla Goldberg

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: October 18, 2011

“Children have an innate capacity for both astounding kindness and intense cruelty” Jennifer Finney Boylan talks to Myla Goldberg about memoir, narrative, and Goldberg’s  new novel, The False Friend. Goldberg is the author of several books, the best known of which may be the novel, Bee Season. Jenny Boylan: The False Friend brings us a [...]

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W.H. Auden on The Red Sox

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: September 29, 2011

Sept. 29, 2011, Boston. Stop all the Tivos, sit on your hands. Don’t order a beer to drink there in the stands, Silence the fans and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let the Blimp circle moaning overhead Scribbling in the sky the message They are Dead, Take off the [...]

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“Not all tears are an evil” : En reve (“a dream”)

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: August 21, 2011

August 21, 2011 Belgrade Lakes, Me. Maybe something in me is trying to make up for lost time.  I was not much of a weeper in the first half of my life, but since 2000 the tears just run like little streams.  I remember being reduced to tears at my all boys prep school, in [...]

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JFB in NYT: “All My Old Haunts”

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: August 19, 2011

The third in my series of summer 2011 op/ed columns for the New York Times appeared on August 18.  This time, I was subbing for either Gail Collins or Paul Krugman.  Or both.  It’s a valedictory piece about ghosts, transness, my open-minded “conservative” parents, and forgiveness.  A kind of amazing thing is that in the [...]

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JFB in NYT: We Want Cake, Too.

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: August 12, 2011

This piece appeared on the op/ed page of the New York Times on Friday, August 12, 2011.  It was the second of a series of Friday columns I wrote while substituting for David Brooks, a substitution which is itself an interesting thought: me, for him, and which I imagine gave conservatives nationwide a chance to [...]

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  • 4576011240_572c819271

    Jenny Boylan's twelfth book, FALCON QUINN AND THE CRIMSON VAPOR, now on sale from HarperCollins!

  • Browse Inside Falcon Quinn!

  • PROFESSOR JENNIFER FINNEY BOYLAN is the author of twelve books, including She's Not There: a Life in Two Genders, and I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted, both published by Random House. A novelist, memoirist, and short story writer, she is also a nationally known advocate for civil rights. Jenny has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Live with Larry King, the Today Show, the Barbara Walters Special, NPR's Marketplace and Talk of the Nation; she has also been the subject of documentaries on CBS News' 48 Hours. and The History Channel. She is a regular contributor to the op/ed page of the New York Times and Conde Nast Traveler magazine. Since 1988, she has been Professor of English at Colby College in Maine; in 2010, she was the Hoyer-Updike Distinguished Writer at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. She has also served on the judging committee of the Fulbright Scholars, administered by the U.S. Department of State.

    Her next published book will be STUCK IN THE MIDDLE WITH YOU: Parenthood in Two Genders, coming from Crown/Random House in 2013, along with an updated, 10th anniversary edition of SHE'S NOT THERE.

    Check out the Twitter feed at JennyBoylan; or join Jennifer Finney Boylan on facebook.

  • Blog Archive

  • The Boylan Family, summer 2010

    DSC_0063 "You hang around our family, you learn all kinds of stuff."

  • Will Forte as Jennifer Finney Boylan on “Saturday Night Live”

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  • Jenny with Barbara Walters, December, 2008

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  • Jenny atop Maine’s Mount Katahdin

    2036947979_34bfbec240 August, 2002.

  • Surrounded

    boylanWith President Clinton and Maine's Governor John Baldacci, fall 2006.

  • JFB and Edward Albee

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    Edward had been my teacher at Johns Hopkins in the winter of 1986. He visited Colby in fall, 2007. As we took our leave of each other, he kissed me on both cheeks and said, "We have done well. You and I."

  • Jenny and her teacher, the great John Barth

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    Jack was my professor at JHU when I did my thesis, back in the day. After many years, I can now confidently say I finally understand his definition of plot. Which is, of course, "the perturbation of an unstable homeostatic system and its catastrophic restoration to a new and complexified equilibrium."