Jennifer Finney Boylan
American author
Jennifer Finney Boylan (born June 22, 1958) is an American author, transgender activist, professor at Barnard College, and a former contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. In December 2023, she became the president of PEN America, having previously been the vice president.
Early life and education
Boylan was born on June 22, 1958, in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and graduated from The Haverford School, a private college-preparatory school in Haverford, Pennsylvania, in 1976. She graduated from Wesleyan University in 1980, then completed graduate work in English at Johns Hopkins University.
Career
Boylan was on the faculty of Colby College from 1988 to 2014. In 2000, she was named "Professor of the Year" at Colby College. She moved to Barnard in 2014, where she is both Professor of English and Anna Quindlen Writer-in-Residence.
Boylan has written 19 books, including novels, collections of short stories, and her memoir. Her 2003 memoir, She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders, was the first book published by an openly transgender American to become a bestseller. It was described by The Advocate as "a seminal piece of the trans literary canon".
The public source identifies “Jennifer Finney Boylan” as american author. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Jennifer, Finney and Boylan.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6178317. The first chronological checks are 1958, 2023, 1976 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jennifer Finney Boylan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.