Boylan, Jennifer Finney

Jennifer Finney Boylan is a U.S. trans novelist, memoirist, professor of English, and leading activist for greater and more positive visibility of trans people in the media.

Boylan was born on June 22, 1958, in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. She graduated from the Haverford School, a private all-boys preparatory school in Haverford, Pennsylvania, in 1976. After graduating from Wesleyan University with a bachelor’s degree in English in 1980, she briefly worked alongside comedy legends like John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Lorne Michaels, Harold Ramis, and Michael O’Donoghue at the magazine The American Bystander, which folded after a single issue in 1982. After this abortive career in humorist periodicals, she went back to school and earned an MA in fine arts from Johns Hopkins University in 1986. ...