Law Commons^™

Why Fiction?, Alafair Burke

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

When I sold my first novel the summer after my first year as a tenure-track law professor, I assured the dean of my law school that fiction was a hobby, completely separate from my academic work, no different than if a colleague were training for a marathon in her spare time. Fifteen years later, this symposium asks its participants - four of us published novelists, one of us a judge, all of us trained lawyers - to reflect on the depiction of the criminal justice system in fiction. Our contributions make clear that the promise I made to my dean …