Earlier this week, the Boston-based legal organization Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) announced that it would honor transgender advocate, best-selling author, and GLAAD co-chair Jennifer Finney Boylan with the Spirit of Justice Award. This honor seeks to recognize Boylan for her writings, teachings, and activism, which have played a significant role in articulating what it means to be transgender.
“Jennifer Finney Boylan’s work over the decades has exposed a broad public to the meaning of transgender lives,” said Janson Wu, Executive Director of GLAD. “Her best-selling memoir She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders introduced many people for the first time to a three-dimensional transgender person. With storytelling that is powerful and humane as well as witty, she has fostered understanding and support for transgender people and the multiple issues they face in navigating a transphobic world.”
Aside from She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders, Boylan has written twelve books – two memoirs, three novellas, one short story collection, and six young adult books. Her background in English began at Colby College, where she was a professor for twenty-five years, and currently acts as a special advisor to the college's president. In addition, Boylan is the 2014 Anna Quindlen Writer-in-Residence at Barnard College, and serves on the Kinsey Institute's Board of Trustees. She has also written many op-eds for the New York Times, and has worked as a consultant on LGBT-inclusive shows such as Transparent and I Am Cait.
On being chosen for this award, Boylan was very appreciative of the work that GLAD does in New England for the LGBT community, especially in her home state of Maine where they worked to defeat a bill that would have stripped transgender people of their rights. She explained, “I am so grateful to be honored by GLAD. Although the organization of which I am the national co-chair, GLAAD, has an extra “A” in its name, GLAD deserves an “A” all its own, for its work in bringing forth justice and in improving the lives of LGBT people, and those that love them, throughout New England.”
The Spirit of Justice Award Dinner will take place at the Boston Marriot Copley Place on Friday, October 16, 2015. For more information, please visit www.glad.org/events, and be sure to congratulate Jennifer on her award via social media where she tweets from @JennyBoylan.
