In the News

2022

“Write Something Good That Matters”: Writer-in-Residence Blanche Boyd Retires After Forty Years
The prospect of retirement itself doesn’t faze Blanche in the slightest, who, when asked how she feels about leaving her teaching days behind, simply said, “I’m ready. I have no idea what I’m going to do,” she admitted. “I wouldn’t mind writing something that’s happy.”
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2019

Blanche McCrary Boyd, Speaker at Saints & Sinners Literary Festival
Founded in 2003, the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival is "an internationally-recognized event that brings together a who’s who of LGBT publishers, writers and readers from throughout the United States and beyond. The Festival, held over 3 days each spring at the Hotel Monteleone in the New Orleans French Quarter, features panel discussions and master classes around literary topics that provide a forum for authors, editors and publishers to talk about their work for the benefit of emerging writers and the enjoyment of fans of LGBT literature."
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Announcing the 2019 PEN/Faulkner Award Finalists
Blanche McCrary Boyd is selected a PEN/Faulkner finalist for TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN RACIST.
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Conn College Professor a Finalist for Prestigious Award
Rick Koster, The Day, 2019
Boyd, a Roman and Tatiana Weller professor of English, is one of five finalists for the prestigious prize, for her novel "The Tomb of the Unknown Racist," which is the final volume of a trilogy that started in 1991 with "The Revolution of Little Girls" and continued in 1997 with "Terminal Velocity."
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Professor Blanche Boyd named a finalist for the 2019 PEN/Faulkner Award
Connecticut College News, 2019
“I am honored and surprised and humbled by the news that I'm a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award,” Boyd said. “It's a relief to have writers I respect so much choose Tomb.”
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BBC names TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN RACIST one of Ten Books to Read in May

BBC's Jane Ciabattari reviews and recommends TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN RACIST as one of their Ten Books to Read in May.
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Vanity Fair recommends TOMB in "What to Read in May"
In Sloane Crosly's article, "What to Read in May," she writes, "...The irreverent Blanche McCrary Boyd is back with her first novel in two decades.
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2018

Lambda Literary Review on TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN RACIST
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Guernica posts TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN RACIST Excerpt
"One spring evening in the year 1999 my mother and I were watching Wheel of Fortune when a news bulletin interrupted the show: two young children had been kidnapped from a Native American reservation in New Mexico." And so it starts.
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Publishers Weekly on TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN RACIST
This bold, funny, and political novel—Boyd’s first in 20 years—returns readers to the singular voice of Ellen Burns (THE REVOLUTION OF LITTLE GIRLS; TERMINAL VELOCITY). No longer the radical addict of her younger years, Ellen is now in her 50s and tirelessly sober, caring for her dementia-fogged mother near her childhood home in 1990s Charleston, S.C. Their relative peace is interrupted by the news that Ellen’s brother, Royce, a notorious white supremacist believed dead, might still be alive. He might even be responsible for the kidnapping of his multiethnic grandchildren, a story that explodes onto national news, sending Ellen on a whirlwind journey to a New Mexico reservation to try and help her long-lost niece. But when the truth about the kidnapping comes to light, Ellen is left in the center of a storm of controversy, along with the local police chief and a budding journalist. The novel is incredibly fast-paced and nearly lighthearted at times, despite its dark and tangled subject matter. With the trappings of a thriller, Boyd’s meditation on family bonds and white guilt is a curious but rewarding departure for the loudmouthed and hilarious Ellen, and a satisfyingly strange conclusion to the arc of her wild life.
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Blanche McCrary Boyd with Hannah Tinti
Guggenheim Fellow and Lambda Literary Award-winner Blanche McCrary Boyd (The Revolution of Little Girls, Terminal Velocity) presents her first novel in twenty years…
Reading, Conversation and Book Signing at Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn, NY 2018
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Kirkus Review on TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN RACIST

Twenty years after her last novel (TERMINAL VELOCITY, 1997, etc.), Boyd returns with a wildly ambitious page-turner that defies easy categorization.

It’s been years since we last saw Boyd’s old protagonist, Ellen Burns: Now it’s 1999, and Ellen—stable and sober—is living a quiet life in Charleston, caring for her aging mother, who’s struggling with dementia. That is, until Page 8 (the book wastes no time). And then one night, after Wheel of Fortune, Ellen is startled by a familiar face on the TV news. A young mother in New Mexico has been kidnapped; her children are missing. Ellen knows that face, though she hasn’t seen it in years: It’s Ruby, her brother’s daughter, now all grown up. Not that Ellen has seen her brother, either: According to the FBI, Royce Burns is dead. Once a celebrated novelist, Royce became a fervent white supremacist, abandoned his multiethnic family, joined up with an underground terrorist organization, and was killed as part of a face-off with the feds. Or at least, that’s what they’re telling her—though she buried his ashes in a child-sized coffin, Ellen herself has never been totally convinced of his death. And so Ellen, both totally plausible and larger-than-life, finds herself rushing to Ruby’s home in New Mexico, still loyal to the idea of her family despite her brother’s crimes. But as she digs into the case alongside rugged police chief Ed Blake, she discovers Ruby’s story—and Royce’s—is even darker and more disturbing than she’d suspected. A gentle romance with Ed bubbling hesitantly in the background, Ellen sets out on a quest to find out the truth about her brother— and is forced to grapple not only with the crimes of her family, but with her own culpability as a white woman, Royce’s sister or not. Unexpectedly light, even chatty, given the subject matter—white supremacy, unspeakable violence, American extremism—the novel is a family drama with all the flourishes of a thriller. Discombobulating—in a good way.

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Blanche McCrary Boyd at RJ Julia May 10th for Book Launch

Blanche McCrary Boyd will discuss her latest book, TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN RACIST. Register to attend. See the list of appearances around the country.

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2013

CLAGS and PEN Co-host Two Evenings on Gay and Lesbian Literature
CLAGS, Jasmina Sinanovic

One of eight writers invited to talk at The CUNY Graduate Center’s “An Evening of Lesbian Literature,” Blanche shared about how she got started writing, “When I was growing up and telling people in my family about the bad things happening to me, they said I was making it up, so now that’s what I do.”
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