Jennifer Finney Boylan to Read From Works at Ursinus

Widely praised author Jennifer Finney Boylan will read from her works at Ursinus College on Nov. 10, 7:30 PM.

Boylan grew up in the Delaware County area as James Boylan and is teaching at Ursinus this semester as the college’s first Updike-Hoyer Distinguished Visiting Writer. She is the author of eleven books, including She's Not There: a Life in Two Genders, one of the first best-selling books by a transgendered American, and I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted.

In She’s Not There, Boylan movingly and skillfully tells of her gender journey in three narratives, including her life story, her marriage to the same woman she married when she was a man, and her friendship with Colby College teaching colleague and fiction writer Richard Russo.

A novelist, memoirist, and short story writer, she is also a nationally known advocate for civil rights, and 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 Condé Nast Traveler magazine.

Her new young adult series starts with Falcon Quinn and the Black Mirror aimed at those in middle grades, and examining whether it is better to embrace one’s true self or to fit in, possibly suppressing your truth. The second Falcon Quinn book is expected to be published in 2011, and another novel for adults in 2012 by Random House. Since 1988, she has been Professor of English at Colby College in Maine.

A book signing will follow the event, and books will be available for purchase.