Jenny Boully is the author of The Book of Beginnings and Endings (Sarabande Books

Sarabande Books

Sarabande Books is an American not-for-profit literary press founded in 1994, and located in Louisville, Kentucky, publishing poetry, fiction and nonfiction.The press was co-founded by Sarah Gorham and Jeffrey Skinner...

, 2007), The Body:An Essay (Slope Editions, 2002 and Essay Press, 2007), and [one love affair]* (Tarpaulin Sky Press

Tarpaulin Sky Press

Tarpaulin Sky Press is a small press publisher of hybrid texts as well as poetry and prose. Founded by Christian Peet in 2006 and based in Grafton, Vermont, the company produces full-length books, chapbooks, trade paperbacks, hand-bound books, and a literary journal that appears in online and paper...

, 2006). Her work has appeared in literary magazines such as Boston Review

Boston Review

Boston Review is a bimonthly American political and literary magazine. The magazine covers, specifically, political debates, literature, and poetry...

, Conjunctions

Conjunctions

Conjunctions, is a biannual American literary journal based at Bard College. It was founded in 1981 and is currently edited by Bradford Morrow....

, Seneca Review, and Tarpaulin Sky

Tarpaulin Sky Press

Tarpaulin Sky Press is a small press publisher of hybrid texts as well as poetry and prose. Founded by Christian Peet in 2006 and based in Grafton, Vermont, the company produces full-length books, chapbooks, trade paperbacks, hand-bound books, and a literary journal that appears in online and paper...

and has been anthologized in The Next American Essay, The Best American Poetry

The Best American Poetry

The Best American Poetry series consists of annual poetry anthologies, each containing seventy-five poems.The series, begun by poet and editor David Lehman in 1988, has a different guest editor every year...

, and Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present. Born in Korat, Thailand and reared in San Antonio, Texas

San Antonio, Texas

San Antonio is the seventh-largest city in the United States of America and the second-largest city within the state of Texas, with a population of 1.33 million. Located in the American Southwest and the south–central part of Texas, the city serves as the seat of Bexar County. In 2011,...

, she has studied at Hollins University

Hollins University

Hollins University is a four-year institution of higher education, a private university located on a campus on the border of Roanoke County, Virginia and Botetourt County, Virginia...

 and the University of Notre Dame

University of Notre Dame

The University of Notre Dame du Lac is a Catholic research university located in Notre Dame, an unincorporated community north of the city of South Bend, in St. Joseph County, Indiana, United States...

 and is currently working on her PhD from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York

City University of New York

The City University of New York is the public university system of New York City, with its administrative offices in Yorkville in Manhattan. It is the largest urban university in the United States, consisting of 23 institutions: 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, the William E...

. She divides her time between Texas

Texas

Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

 and Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

.
Boully's first book, The Body, sold out of its first printing and was re-issued by Essay Press  in 2007. A groundbreaking use of form, described by American poet and critic Arielle Greenberg

Arielle Greenberg

Arielle Greenberg is a Feminist Poet and the poetry editor of Black Clock. She is most renowned for naming and describing the concept of the Gurlesque in the anthology Gurlesque: the new grrly, grotesque, burlesque poetics which she co-edited with Lara Glenum.-Biography:Greenberg was an assistant...

 as a "text on absence, love, ontology and identity—minus the text," the content of The Body is delivered only in footnotes, while the usual "body" of work is missing. Comparing it to Thalia Field's

Thalia Field

Thalia Field is an American writer and editor known for interdisciplinary multimedia collaborations. She teaches experimental fiction and performance at Brown University. She has published three books of experimental writing and prose poetry with New Directions Publishing, most recently Bird...

 Point and Line, Greenberg praised The Body as "an invigorating new approach to the idea of a text

Text (literary theory)

A text, within literary theory, is a coherent set of symbols that transmits some kind of informative message. This set of symbols is considered in terms of the informative message's content, rather than in terms of its physical form or the medium in which it is represented...

, of fiction

Fiction

Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...

, of essay

Essay

An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...

, of poetry

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

 collection," signaling a "courageous and thoughtful new voice in literature

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

."

[one love affair]*, Boully's second book, was nominated for five awards and won two (Best Book of New Poetry Published in 2006, and Best Second Book) from Coldfront Magazine. "Through three sections rife with asterisks and superscript roman numerals," using a mixture of fiction

Fiction

Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...

, essay

Essay

An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...

, prose poetry

Prose poetry

Prose poetry is poetry written in prose instead of using verse but preserving poetic qualities such as heightened imagery and emotional effects.-Characteristics:Prose poetry can be considered either primarily poetry or prose, or a separate genre altogether...

, and memoir

Memoir

A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...

, [one love affair]* "challenges the ways in which we construct narratives and read texts," as it "wends a story of broken relationships, deploying everything from mimosa

Mimosa

Mimosa is a genus of about 400 species of herbs and shrubs, in the subfamily Mimosoideae of the legume family Fabaceae. The generic name is derived from the Greek word μιμος , meaning "mimic."...

 trees and spring to nightclubs and crack-smoke," and explores " the way we learn to love and love again."

Boully's third collection, The Book of Beginnings and Endings, "consists of beginnings and endings of more than 30 different texts, spliced together seemingly at random. The subject matter ranges wildly: invertebrate zoology

Invertebrate zoology

Invertebrate zoology is the biological discipline that consists of the study of invertebrate animals, i.e. animals without a backbone...

, probability

Probability

Probability is ordinarily used to describe an attitude of mind towards some proposition of whose truth we arenot certain. The proposition of interest is usually of the form "Will a specific event occur?" The attitude of mind is of the form "How certain are we that the event will occur?" The...

, the psychology

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

 of a scream, the retirement

Retirement

Retirement is the point where a person stops employment completely. A person may also semi-retire by reducing work hours.Many people choose to retire when they are eligible for private or public pension benefits, although some are forced to retire when physical conditions don't allow the person to...

 of an ice cream

Ice cream

Ice cream is a frozen dessert usually made from dairy products, such as milk and cream, and often combined with fruits or other ingredients and flavours. Most varieties contain sugar, although some are made with other sweeteners...

 man, a plague of frogs. Slowly, the reader notices thematic connections and the shadow of a narrative

Narrative

A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...

 arc." As with Boully's previous collections, The Book of Beginnings and Endings accrues meaning and import through "use of association, rather than spelled-out narrative." It "resembles poetry. The texts themselves are essayistic, except that they are all fictional." A reviewer for the Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

focused on another shared element in all of Boully's books--love

Love

Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...

, the affair of love, its beginning and it ending: "Like Anaïs Nin

Anaïs Nin

Anaïs Nin was a French-Cuban author, based at first in France and later in the United States, who published her journals, which span more than 60 years, beginning when she was 11 years old and ending shortly before her death, her erotic literature, and short stories...

, Boully believes exclusively in love; it's her religion." On the relationship between this author and her readers, the reviewer added: It's uncommonly good to read the work of a writer who believes so unabashedly in the miracle of writing—that some dimension, unlike any other, exists between the writer and the reader; that literature

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

is an 'open system,' a 'living system.'"