Boyd Zenner

1952 - 2022

Boyd Zenner

January 15, 1952 - April 5, 2022

Boyd Zenner, 70, of Charlottesville, died as the result of a fall while walking her dog on April 5, 2022.

Boyd was born on January 15, 1952, in Jackson, Tenn., to Philip and Maria F. Zenner. She grew up in Chicago, California, and Ohio. Her mother was from Tennessee, and Boyd loved the summers she spent on the family farm east of Memphis with her grandparents where she developed her love of horses. Boyd studied English and Spanish at Sweet Briar College, graduating in 1974, and she had been a member of the Charlottesville community since 1974.

In her thirty years as an acquisition editor at the University of Virginia Press, Boyd created a distinguished, unique, and award-winning list of books, focusing on architecture and art, environmental history, and animal studies. She commissioned many books and was a mentor to a wide array of very different (and sometimes challenging) authors. She sought out scholars she thought might have a good idea for a book, helped them refine their concept, and guided them through the process of creating a good book, from first draft to publication.

She loved books and reading and driving (especially when exceeding the speed limit); She was a phenomenal and solicitous cook—if you were sick or ailing, you could expect a delicious casserole to turn up at your door. She was a gifted cartoonist, and a talented guitarist who took pleasure in all kinds of music and she especially enjoyed playing her guitar with a quartet of musically inclined friends.

Her taste was eclectic and very much her own. She was fascinated by skeletons and taxidermy and odd museums. She had a stuffed bat in her living room. She loved all kinds of dogs. She had a deep appreciation and affection for creepy-crawlies (with a sizeable collection of insects in amber), though she loathed snakes. She was smart and funny, loved to laugh but thought most "jokes" were stupid, and though she loved animals, no sacred cow was safe from her fierce, irreverent, spiky and quick-witted intelligence.

An accomplished gardener of both vegetables and flowers—for a time she wrote a gardening column for Albemarle Magazine—Boyd generously provided her friends with baskets of basil and tomatoes and eggplants each summer, and for many years her garden party in May, timed to the days when her roses were all in bloom, was a much-anticipated social event.

She is survived by her brother, Stuart Zenner, (Karen); her sister, Lelia Maria Zenner (Mark Wessels); her sister, Holly Elizabeth Zenner; her sister, Nancy Margaret Ramsey (Kenny); many nieces and nephews; and two Rottweilers, Juno and Inga, whom she adored.

A memorial service is planned for late May, details will be available at hillandwood.com.