Tag Archives: finney

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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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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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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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: This Astronomical Recession

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: August 5, 2011

This op/ed column appeared on August 5, 2011.  It was the first of a month of “guest columns” for the New York Times.  I was substituting for David Brooks for August, a substitution which itself is not without its own pleasures.–JFB OP-ED COLUMNIST This Astronomical Recession By JENNIFER FINNEY BOYLAN Published: August 4, 2011 Belgrade [...]

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What Trans Activists Can Learn from New York

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: June 25, 2011

Amid all the cheering about marriage equality in New York State, it’s worth remembering that transgender people continue to lag far behind our gay brothers and sisters in the fight for equal rights.  In 36 states, I can still be fired for being my own damned self, and here in Maine we only narrowly defeated [...]

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JFB op/ed in New York Times: “Oprah, I Hardly Knew You.”

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: May 28, 2011

THERE I was, on Oprah Winfrey’s couch, when she turned to me and asked: “So. You have a vagina?” As a transgender woman, I’d gotten this question before. I allowed as how I did. Ms. Winfrey began to sing to me. “Yes, she has a vagina.” I interrupted her. “What you mean,” I said, “is, [...]

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JFB testimony to the Maine Judiciary Committee: “The ‘Wacky’ Professor”

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: April 13, 2011

Yesterday, I spoke to the Maine legislature’s Judiciary committee. A bill has been proposed to “exempt” transgender people from protections under the Maine Human Rights Act, which went into effect six years ago. Currently, Maine protects GLBT people from discrimination, and this includes a so called “public accommodations” provision of the very sort that was, [...]

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Interview with JFB at Barnes & noble audio site

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: April 4, 2011

Here’s an interview Barnes & Noble’s podcast division did with me during the I’M LOOKING THROUGH YOU TOUR. I’d forgotten about this entirely before coming upon it by accident recently. Hit the ol’ play button to hear the talk.

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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”

    WiFo-Jennifer Finney Boylan-1

  • 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

    edward_albee_by_fred_j_field-150x150

    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

    Boylan_Barth

    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."