Author Jenny Boully’s essays are ripe with romance.

She draws connections between the digression, reflection, imagination, and experience that charterize falling in love, as well as the art of arranging words on a page.

On March 25 at 7 p.m., the 2020 Guggenhem Fellow in General Nonfiction will present “Thinking in Fragments: How to Approach the Lyric Essay” as part of Virginia Tech’s Visiting Writers Series.

Those interested in attending can do so by following this link to join the Zoom session.

Boully will discuss her works, including her 2018 collection “Betwixt-and-Between: Essays on the Writing Life.” The collection consists of essays on writing, moving among digression, reflection, imagination, and experience as a lover might, bringing art into the world.

Carmen Giménez Smith, an award-winning author and professor of English at Virginia Tech, said Boully evokes “knowledge’s ephemeral core, how it looks in the air or as a meadow, her brilliance inflected with lyric witchery.”

Boully’s previous books include not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them, The Book of Beginnings and Endings: Essays, [one love affair]*, of the mismatched teacups, of the single-serving spoon: a book of failures, and The Body: An Essay.

Boully was born in Thailand and grew up in San Antonio, Texas. She’s an alumna of Hollins University, where she double majored in English and philosophy and earned a master’s degree in English criticism and writing. Her other degrees include a master of fine arts in creative writing from the University of Notre Dame and a Ph.D. in English from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. 

Boully teaches at Columbia College Chicago and the Bennington Writing Seminars.

To learn more about this event and the Visiting Writers Series, contact Associate Professor Matthew Vollmer at vollmer@vt.edu.