JENNIFER FINNEY BOYLAN is the author of 18 books, including Mad Honey, co-authored with Jodi Picoult. Her memoir, She’s Not There was the first bestselling work by a transgender American. Since 2014 she has been the inaugural Anna Quindlen Writer in Residence at Barnard College of Columbia University; she is also on the faculty of the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference of Middlebury College and the Sirenland Writers’ Conference in Positano, Italy.
In 2022-23 she was a Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She graduated from Wesleyan University and Johns Hopkins, and holds doctorates honoris causa from the College of the Atlantic, Sarah Lawrence College, the New School, and Wesleyan. She was also awarded a masters ad eundem gradum from Colby College.
For many years she was Contributing Opinion Writer for the opinion section of the New York Times. Her work has also appeared in the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, Downeast, and many other publications. She has been a guest of the Oprah Winfrey Show, Larry King Live, the Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS News’ 48 Hours, and 30 Rock with Brian Williams. On public radio, she has been a guest on Fresh Air with Terri Gross as well as on Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me, where she was quizzed about hot dogs, and got all three questions right.
She lives in Maine and New York with her wife Deirdre. They have two children, a daughter, Zai, and a son, Sean.