Jennifer Finney Boylan: Good Boy
New York Times bestselling author JENNIFER FINNEY BOYLAN presents her latest memoir Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs, with special guest KATHY GRIFFIN. This program will be streamed live online. Register for the free webinar here.
With poignant prose and a delicate, subtle approach to the struggles and beauty of life, Boylan explores her growing understanding of friendship, relationships, and gender identity across seven stages of her life, as reflected in the dogs who were there each step of the way. You can pre-order or purchase a copy of the book from our bookstore partner, Seminary Co-op.
This program will be streamed live via Zoom and is free and open to the public. While there is no cost to attend, donations are welcome as we weather this crisis. If you are able, you can help support the American Writers Museum here.
More about Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs
In her New York Times opinion column, Jennifer Finney Boylan wrote about her relationship with her beloved dog Indigo, and her wise, funny, heartbreaking column went viral. In Good Boy, Boylan explores what should be the simplest topic in the world, but never is: finding and giving love.
Good Boy is a universal account of a remarkable story: showing how a young boy became a middle-aged woman—accompanied at seven crucial moments of growth and transformation by seven memorable dogs. “Everything I know about love,” she writes, “I learned from dogs.” Their love enables us to pull off what seem like impossible feats: to find our way home when we are lost, to live our lives with humor and courage, and above all, to best become our true selves.
Praise for Good Boy:
“Filled with insight and remarkable candor, this is a sterling tribute to the love of dogs.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Boylan’s gorgeously crafted homage to our unconditional love of dogs turns out to be much less of a paeon to her constant canine companions, and much more of a journey through her own psyche and the moral needle of the world we live in. What do we keep, even as we lose pieces of ourselves? The dog at your feet while you’re reading already knows the answer.”
—Jodi Picoult, #1 NYT bestselling author
“Good Boy is a warm, funny, instantly engaging testament to the power of love—canine and human—to ease us through life’s radical transitions. And I say that as a cat person!”
—Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize winner
Professor Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of fifteen books, is the inaugural Anna Quindlen Writer in Residence at Barnard College of Columbia University. Her column “Men & Women” appears on the op/ed page of the New York Times on alternate Wednesdays. She serves on the Board of Trustees of PEN America. From 2011 to 2018 she served on the Board of Directors of GLAAD and also provided counsel for the TV series Transparent and I Am Cait. Her 2003 memoir, She’s Not There: a Life in Two Genders was the first bestselling work by a transgender American. A novelist, memoirist, and short story writer, she is also a nationally known advocate for human rights. She lives in New York City, and in Belgrade Lakes, Maine, with her wife, Deedie. They have a son, Sean and a daughter, Zai.