About Me

[For a more traditional author bio, click here.]

For the past few decades, I’ve mostly written for two audiences: Appellate justices and young readers (middle to high school). Most recently I’ve written political and legal commentary and Op Ed pieces for the Washington Post, NBC Think Blog, CNN, Slate Magazine (scroll down for recent publications) and  a six-book series of biographies (middle grade).

I am currently writing a graphic novel on disinformation for First Second Books, a division of Macmillan Publishers. The book will be part of this series:

Writing for young readers is much like writing for appellate justices. I know that sounds a joke, but appellate justices want everything broken down and digestible. I won’t carry the comparison too far: Ninth graders are usually more open minded than appellate justices, and a lot more fun.

I decided to go to law school during Clinton’s impeachment and Senate trial. (I was fascinated) I’d been teaching English at the college level for seven years. I have a master’s in English with an emphasis in fiction writing (no kidding). I’d published a handful of short stories, a few personal essays, and I had a novel in progress.

Rivka’s Way, my first novel, was published during my first year of law school.

Initially I wanted to be a legal journalist, and then I wanted to be an elections lawyer (I like elections), but instead I became an appellate defense lawyer, which meant lots of research and writing, and no glory.

(I do election law pro bono. I have monitored voting and tabulation in two states, and I’ve done legal work in a third. Currently I am on the Georgia Democrats Voter Protection Committee. I drafted rules and procedures, and most recently I revised and updated the legal voter protection manual for the Georgia Democrats.)

My Twitter thread-writing career began as research for a book called How Trump Happened. I so enjoyed writing Twitter threads that I lost interest in the book, kept researching and tweeting, and then decided to make all my research public on my blog.

So far, the highlight of my Twitter-thread-writing career was when George Papadopolous called me deluded. I had great fun writing my response, which is here as a twitter thread, and here as a blog post.

Xena, a Twitter follower asked:

I was 38 when I took the LSAT. My law school admission essay was entitled: Why a Fiction Writer Belongs in Law School.

No, not because both are liars. Both fiction writing and law are about narrative, viewpoint, and human nature. Literature is competing versions of the same story. The law is about motive. Cases are about character in conflict. I thought it was obvious that a fiction writer belonged in law school.

After my first year of law school, I rewrote my admission essay, called it “From Literature to Litigation,” and sent it off to The Recorder, San Francisco’s legal newspaper. You can read it here.

Yes. 39 is such a nice age, I decided to stay 39 for a few decades. (Joke from The Important of Being Earnest.)

For twelve years I maintained a private appellate law practice limited to representing indigents on appeal from adverse rulings. I believe with the ACLU that when the rights of society’s most vulnerable members are denied, everybody’s rights are imperiled. I also believe with John Updike that the purpose of literature is to expand our sympathies.

When the constitutional crisis is over, I have a fantasy of going back to fiction writing, and writing a multi-generational family American history saga.

I live with my family on California’s beautiful central coast.

My books have received the following honors and distinctions:

Andrew Jackson

♦Honorable Mention, Grateful American Book Award

Alexander Hamilton

♦A Junior Library Guild selection

The Girl From The Tar Paper School::

♦Jane Addams Peace Association, Children’s Book Award for Older Readers, 2015

♦Carter G. Woodson Middle Level Book Award, 2015

♦California Reading Association Eureka Silver Honor Book Award

♦Included on the 2015 list of Notable Social Studies Trade Books for young readers compiled by the National Council for Social Studies

♦Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children (National Association of Teachers of English), Recommended Book

♦Included in the New York Public Library’s list of 100 children’s books to read in 2014.

♦A Junior Library Guild selection

Rivka’s Way:

♦Sidney Taylor Book Awards, Notable book of 2001

♦Lilith Magazine’s 5th Annual Selection of Books for Young Readers

♦Included in Great Books for Girls, by Kathleen Odean

♦Included in Best Jewish Books for Children and Teens, by Linda R. Silver

Guilty? Crime, Punishment, and the Changing Face of Justice

♦Junior Library Guild selection

Recent Legal and Political Commentary (includes only the past year):

NBC News Blog: “Trump impeachment inquiry bombshells imperil Republicans’ circumstantial evidence defense” (Nov. 20, 2019)

NBC News Blog: “Trump and Giuliani’s impeachment defense pushes America closer to a ‘mafia state’” (Nov. 5, 2019)

NBC News Blog: ‘No quid pro quo?’ Why Trump’s impeachment defense sounds a lot like his Mueller defense” (Nov. 15, 2019)

NBC News Blog: “Democrats’ Trump impeachment inquiry should revisit the testimony of Michael Cohen” (coauthored with MSNBC Legal Commentator Glenn Kirschner, Oct. 10, 2019)

CNN.com: “Romney’s Astonishing Nonsense about Amash and Mueller” (May 15, 2019).

CNN.com: “The Real Reason Trump is Pushing a Free Speech Order on College Campuses” (Mar. 6, 2019)

(My published has also appeared in publications as diverse as Education Week, Scope Magazine, The Iowa Review, Cricket Magazine, and The American Literary Review.)

Education

J.D., University of California, Berkeley School of Law

M.A., University of California, Davis, Graduate School, English with an Emphasis in Fiction Writing

B.A., University of Pennsylvania