Jodi Picoult Will Join Jennifer Finney Boylan to Discuss Boylan's Memoir at The Music Hall Lounge
The event featuring Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan will take place at The Music Hall Lounge at 7pm
On Tuesday, April 14 at 7pm, writer Jennifer Finney Boylan will visit The Music Hall Lounge with the paperback of her book, CLEAVAGE. In CLEAVAGE, Boylan returns with a searching and timely reflection on gender, two decades after the groundbreaking success of She's Not There. Situating her personal story within the shifting cultural landscape—from the relative openness surrounding her 2000 transition to today's era of backlash—Boylan examines how gender shapes identity, embodiment, relationships, and the passage of time. By turns incisive, poignant, and wryly funny, Cleavage offers a powerful meditation on living authentically across and beyond the boundaries of gender.
This 7pm event features a moderated conversation with her Mad Honey co-author Jodi Picoult, and is followed by an audience Q&A and a post-show meet-and-greet. It will be held at The Music Hall Lounge at 131 Congress St., Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Jennifer Finney Boylan's She's Not There was the first bestselling work written by a transgender American. Since its publication 20 years ago, she has become the go-to person for insight into the impact of gender on our lives, from the food we eat to the dreams we dream, both for ourselves and for our children. But Cleavage is more than a deep dive into gender identity; it's also a look at the difference between coming out as trans in 2000—when many people reacted to Boylan's transition with love—and the present era of blowback and fear.
How does gender affect our sense of self? Our body image? The passage of time? The friends we lose—and keep? Boylan considers her womanhood, reflects on the boys and men who shaped her, and reconceives of herself as a writer, activist, parent, and spouse. With heart-wrenching honesty, she illustrates the feeling of liminality that followed her to adulthood but demonstrates the redemptive power of love through it all.
With Boylan's trademark humor and poignancy, Cleavage is a sharp, witty, and captivating look at the triumphs and losses of a life lived in two genders. Cleavage provides hope for a future in which we all have the freedom to live joyfully as men, as women, and in the space between us.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jennifer Finney Boylan is the author of 19 books, including Mad Honey, coauthored with Jodi Picoult. Her memoir, She's Not There, was the first bestselling work by a transgender American. Since 2014, she has been the inaugural Anna Quindlen Writer in Residence at Barnard College of Columbia University; she is also on the faculty of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference of Middlebury College and the Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy. She is the former President of PEN America, and from 2011 to 2018, she was a member of the Board of Directors of GLAAD, including four years as national co-chair. For many years, she was a contributing opinion writer for the opinion section of the New York Times. Her work has also appeared in the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, Literary Hub, Down East, and many other publications. She lives in Maine and New York with her wife, Deirdre. They have two children: a daughter, Zai, and a son, Sean.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR:
Jodi Picoult is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of thirty novels, including By Any Other Name, Mad Honey (co-authored with Jennifer Finney Boylan), Wish You Were Here, The Book of Two Ways, A Spark of Light, Small Great Things, Leaving Time, and My Sister's Keeper, and, with daughter Samantha van Leer, two young adult novels, Between the Lines and Off the Page. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband.
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