Jennifer Finney Boylan | PEN America President and Chairwoman

NOTE: This article is a republication- Source: PEN America (by Suzanne Trimel).

Jennifer Finney Boylan has been elected president and chairwoman of the PEN America Board of Trustees. Boylan, the author of 18 books and an English professor at Barnard College (where she is the Anna Quindlen writer-in-residence), points to the power of storytelling as her inspiration in joining the board in 2018. “My life has been changed by the books that I’ve read. And I saw how stories about people like me were able to change people’s hearts and minds.”

Along with novels and young adult fiction, Boylan has written two bestselling memoirs focused on her life as a trans woman. Most recently, she co-authored a novel, Mad Honey, with Jodi Picoult. Boylan follows a roster of notable writers as PEN America’s president including Salman Rushdie and Jennifer Egan, and most recently Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter Ayad Akhtar, whom she succeeds.

She spoke to PEN America’s Suzanne Trimel, senior communications advisor, about why she became involved with PEN America, why she was drawn to its mission to defend free expression, and what she hopes to accomplish over the next three years of her term.

Read the full article here