This week in “queer parents being awesome” is the news that author, professor, transgender advocate, and parent Jennifer Finney Boylan has been named president and chair of PEN America, the century-old organization dedicated to defending writers and free expression.
Boylan has been on the PEN America board of trustees since 2018, the last two years on the executive committee, and has served as vice president. She is also the first Anna Quindlen Writer-in-Residence at Barnard College, and has been national co-chair of GLAAD.
She told PEN America in a recent interview that she got involved with their organization because of the difficulty she found in explaining to people what it means to be transgender. You can explain the science and neurology, she said, “But none of that opens minds as quickly as reading stories. Stories open a door.”
“If there aren’t stories about you, there’s a way that you feel you don’t exist, that you’re invisible,” she continued. “It’s not about trans people—and I don’t want people to think that PEN is now going to be all exclusively focused on trans—it’s about allowing people to know that they are worthy of stories, that their lives have value, that there is a story for all of us.”
And she added in a press release:
All these efforts to silence and repress are evidence of the power for change in narrative. I’m most passionate about having everyone’s stories heard, told, and published because that is the way to evolve our culture and allow all people to realize their potential.”
She also told the New York Times yesterday:
People are going to see in me an L.G.B.T.Q. advocate, but that’s not my job as PEN president. My job is to fight for freedom of speech for everybody, including people I disagree with. I’m going to be fighting for free expression for liberals and conservatives, because freedom of speech is under attack from the right and the left.
Boylan has published 18 books, including novels, thrillers, memoirs and the Falcon Quinn adventure series for young adults. Her two bestselling memoirs She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders (2003), the first-ever bestseller by a trans American, and I’m Looking Through You (2008), focused on her experiences as a trans woman. Most recently, she and Jodi Picoult co-authored the bestselling novel Mad Honey, about a teen’s murder trial. My favorite of her books, however, is Stuck in the Middle with You: A Memoir of Parenting in Three Genders, in which she tells of her experiences as both a mother and a father; shares with us the challenges—and joys—that she, her wife, and their two sons encountered during her transition; and explores what it means to be a mother or a father in today’s world.
She seems a superb pick to lead PEN America at this current moment and I look forward to seeing what she will accomplish.