Nonfiction: Jenny Boylan
Jenny Finney Boylan is author of the story collection Remind Me To Murder You Later (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), three novels, The Planets (Poseidon Press, 1991), The Constellations, and Getting In (Warner Books, 1997), and, most recently, the memoirs She's Not There (Doubleday, 2003) and I'm Looking Through You (2008). She’s Not There was one of the first bestselling works by a transgendered American (until 2001 she published under the name James Boylan) and won an award from the Lambda LIterary Foundation in 2004, the year after its initial publication. Getting In was optioned for film by Renny Harlin and Geena Davis, and Jenny was tapped to write the initial screenplay for New Line Cinema. Her nonfiction has appeared on the op/ed pages of the New York Times, in GQ magazine, Allure, and Glamour. She is also an ongoing contributor to Conde Nast Traveler magazine; her most recent work there was on Easter Island, published in the January 2007 issue.
Since 1988, Jenny Boylan has been a professor of creative writing and American literature at Colby College, in Waterville, Maine. Boylan was a visiting professor at University College Cork, Ireland, in 1998-99. She was promoted to the rank of full Professor in May of 2001, and was chosen by students as the Charles Walker Bassett "Professor of the Year" in 2000. At Colby she has served as co-chair of English (2002-4), Director of Creative Writing (2005-07) and Associate Chair of English (1996-98).
Jenny has been a frequent guest on a number of national television and radio programs, including three visits to the Oprah Winfrey Show. She has also appeared on the Larry King Show, The Today Show and been the subject of a documentary on CBS News’ 48 Hours. She has also appeared on a wide range of local and syndicated television shows, as well as NPR's Marketplace and the Diane Rehm show. In 2007 she played herself on two episodes of ABC's "All My Children." She has spoken widely around the country on gender and imagination, at venues including the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. and the New Jersey State Theatre. She has given plenary and keynote speeches at conferences on diversity and scholarship around the country, and at colleges and universities including Amherst, Wesleyan, Dartmouth, Columbia, Vanderbilt, Duke, Bucknell, Dickinson, Bates, Ohio State, Middlebury, Gettysburg, Georgia State, the University of Puget Sound, and Westminster College in Salt Lake City. She has spoken at law firms, at corporate events, and at bookstores from Seattle to Vermont. Find out more at her website: www.jenniferboylan.net
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(photo by Marion Ettlinger) Helena María Viramontes is the author of The Moths and Other Stories (1985) and Under the Feet of Jesus (1995), a novel. Her most recent novel, Their Dogs Came with Them, just published by Atria Books, focuses on the dispossessed, the working poor, the homeless, and the undocumented of East Los Angeles, where Viramontes was born and raised. Her work strives to recreate the visceral sense of a world virtually unknown to mainstream letters and to transform readers through relentlessly compassionate storytelling.
Alex Lemon's poetry collections include Hallelujah Blackout (Milkweed Editions), Mosquito (Tin House Books 2006) and the chapbook At Last Unfolding Congo (horse less press 2007). A memoir is also forthcoming from Scribner. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous magazines, including Best American Poetry 2008, AGNI, BOMB, Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review, New England Review, jubilat, Open City, Pleiades, The Southern Review and Tin House. Among his awards are a 2005 Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and a 2006 Minnesota Arts Board Grant. He co-edits LUNA: A Journal of Poetry and Translation with Ray Gonzalez and is a frequent contributor to The Bloomsbury Review. He teaches at TCU in Fort Worth, Texas.