JournalNow.com – Jerry Harkavy – The Associated Press – Winston-Salem Journal
Belgrade Lakes, Maine – Jennifer Finney Boylan never set out to be the public face for transgender people.
But Boylan, a novelist and English professor at Colby College, was thrust into that role by her 2002 best-selling memoir about the transition to womanhood that freed her from the decades-long torment of being a female trapped in a male body.
With three appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show, two on Larry King Live and numerous other interviews and public appearances, Boylan, 49, has become a sunny-face activist for the nation’s transgender people and one of the most widely recognized transsexuals of recent years.