Jennifer Finney Boylan is a bestselling novelist, memoirist, and cultural commentator whose work has helped shape conversations about identity, family, and what it means to live an authentic life. She is the author of nineteen books, including the groundbreaking memoir She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders, the first bestselling memoir by a transgender American, the bestselling novel Mad Honey, co-authored with Jodi Picoult, and her most recent memoir, Cleavage: Men, Women, and the Space Between Us.

Boylan is the inaugural Anna Quindlen Writer in Residence and Professor of English at Barnard College of Columbia University. A longtime advocate for writers and free expression, she serves as a Trustee and President Emerita of PEN America and previously served as national co-chair of GLAAD. She has also taught at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy.

A former contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, Boylan has written for The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and numerous national publications. Through her writing, teaching, and advocacy, she continues to inspire readers around the world with stories of compassion, courage, humor, and the enduring power of reinvention.

"The Heisenberg Variations: Invention, Imagination, and Revision"

Professor Jenny Boylan, transgender author, activist, and educator, will examine creativity in art, music, and story. She will suggest that the ways we change and evolve over the course of a long life are similar, although not identical, to the ways we write and revise upon the page. With examples from Bach, Dickens, Degas, and Boylan’s own life.