Author to speak about activism

The College at Brockport will be hosting a lecture with Jennifer Finney Boylan Nov. 1 at 7 p.m. in the Union Ballroom.

She will be coming to the College at Brockport campus to lecture and read from her memoir She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders.  This free event is sponsored by Sexual Orientations United for Liberation (SOUL) and the Women and Gender Studies Organization (WGSO).

Boylan is a well-known transsexual writer and has published 13 books, which include three memoirs, three novels, a collection of short stories and six young adult books.

Her memoir She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders is a New York Times bestseller and explores the territory that lies between man and woman.

She is also known for her activism for LGBTQ individuals, her involvement on the Gay & Lesbian Alliance against Defamation (GLAAD) board of directors and the Kinsey Institute for Sex, Gender and Reproduction board of trustees.

For 25 years Boylan has been a part of the English department of the Colby College in Maine and has taught numerous students.

Her advocacy involves not just the LGBTQ community, but anyone interested in writing. She has shown her support for writers through her involvement with the PEN American Center, a literary organization.

Boylan was born in 1958, in Valley Forge, Pa.

In 1980, she graduated from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn.

From there, Boylan traveled to New York where she became the managing editor of American Bystander Magazine and founded the first cast of Saturday Night Live.


Boylan’s teaching career started in 1986 when she began a master’s program for the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md.

She spent years teaching at Johns Hopkins before she finally started teaching at Colby College.

Nationwide, Boylan has traveled and spoken at gender conventions and hundreds of college campuses. She has been a guest on many television and radio programs, including the Oprah Winfrey Show, the Larry King Show, and NPR.

Word of Boylan’s approaching lecture has reached past the Brockport campus to the surrounding city of Rochester.

Equal Grounds Coffee Shop, a LGBTQ-friendly coffee shop in South Avenue Rochester, has spread the news of Boylan’s anticipated appearance to its clientele.

Maur DeLaney, a transgendered man who runs the Genesee Valley Gender Variants meetings at the coffee shop every Thursday night, keeps the LGBTQ community informed of relevant upcoming events and told many about Boylan’s Brockport lecture.

Alexander Ray, a pre-operation transgendered man and a regular customer at the coffee shop, has shared his excitement for Boylan’s lecture.

“Jennifer Boylan would be a fun experience to know about someone’s gender identity,” Ray said. “Knowing very little about the transgender community, I can see and understand how she went through her life as a transsexual woman. When I first heard about the lecture, I looked up more information about her. Reading what she wrote, it gave me a lot of encouragement and inspiration on what my future will be like.”

 

Jcolv1@brockport.edu