Contemporary Poets

United States

[Note: The poets whose bios appear on this page are practicing lawyers, or obtained their law degree and pursued other interests.]

A-to-L

M-to-Z

Susan Abraham
Susan Abraham was born in 1955, received a B.A. in English from Oberlin College in 1977, a law degree from Rutgers University in 1983 and an MFA in poetry from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers in 1990. Her poetry has appeared in various journals, including Paris Review, Poetry, Denver Quarterly and Tikkun. She worked as a criminal defense lawyer for over fifteen years, graded bar exams and represented plaintiffs in employment discrimination cases. Abraham now teaches at New York Law School. [Two Poems]

Nancy Abrams
Nancy Abrams is a Santa Cruz, California poet, singer, songwriter, and lawyer. She is also a lecturer at University of California, Santa Cruz. ["Memorial Day"]

Seth D. Abramson
Seth Abramson is a trial attorney for the New Hampshire Public Defender. He is a graduate of Dartmouth (1998) and obtained his J.D. from Harvard Law School (2001). His poems have appeared in a various journals, including The Alsop Review and The Antioch Review. Abramson, along with Virginia M. Heatter, are the founders of The New Hampshire Review, a quarterly journal of poetry, published at Nashua, New Hampshire. [Wikipedia] [The New Hampshire Review] [poems] [The Suburban Ecstasies: Seth Abramson's blog] [Poems—Legal Studies Forum]

Stephen Ackerman
Stephen Ackerman is a laywer in the New York City Law Department. His poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Antioch Review, Columbia Review, Boulevard, Mudfish, Seneca Review, and upstreet.

Harry A. Ackley
Harry Ackley was born in 1924. He obtained his B.A. degree from Texas Arts & Industries University, and his LL.B. from the McGeorge College of Law in 1955. He has served as Deputy District Attorney, Chief Criminal Deputy District Attorney, and District Attorney of Yolo County, California. From 1976 to 1991, he served as Yolo county Judge of the Superior Court. Judge Ackley has served as a volunteer attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union and is a life member of the NAACP. He is also a published poet.

John Acuff
John Acuff is a Cookesville, Tennesse lawyer. He obtained his B.A. in 1962 from David Lipscomb College, and his J.D. in 1969 from Vanderbilt University. He was admitted to practice in 1969. Acuff was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on July 20, 1940. He served in the U.S. Navy, 1962-1966, and after graduation from law school was law clerk to Honorable Harry Phillips, Chief Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit, 1969 ti 1970.

ADAMS
Paula Adams Tennant, who writes under the name ADAMS, lives in Northern California. She served in the Navy during World War II and studied law after the war. She held various positions as a prosecutor and in 1970 was appointed to the U.S. Board of Parole. In 1983, she was appointed to the U.S. Parole Commission.

Tennant's published poetry includes Passion of Creation, The Two Headed God, Moon of Reflection, Sheaves of Silence, and Conversations with Keith all published by Lost Coast Press (Fort Bragg, California). [Paula Adams Tennant]

Steven R. Adams
Steve Adams, a native of Quincy, Illinois, was born in 1965. He obtained his undergraduate degree from the University of Kentucky and his law degree from the Salmond Chase College of Law at Northern Kentucky University. He practices law in Cincinnati, Ohio. [Steven R. Adams]

Al Albrethsen
[source: Denver Post, Jan. 10, 1990]

Iris Alkalay
Iris Alkalay was born in Afula, Israel, in 1963 and emigrated to the United States in 1965. Her father was Bugarian-born, of Turkish and Bulgarian parents; her Mother was Argentinian-born, of Ukrainian parents. Her family spent summers in Argentina. Alkalay graduated from Brandeis University in 1985 and from Suffolk University Law School in 1988. She is a flutist and for many years played with various orchestras and chamber groups. Her first job as a lawyer was with Professor Stephen Hicks working on the Sixth Edition of Black's Law Dictionary. She worked as a criminal defense lawyer for several years and then concentrated her practice on criminal appeals. She occasionally works as a Spanish translator.

Alkalay has taken a decade long leave from the practice of law to raise her two sons. She is the author of a short memoir titled My Father's Three Bulgarias. Her poetry appears in Free Verse and 2River View.

Alkalay resides near Boston. ["Marine Biologist"] [Poems—Legal Studies Forum]

Teresa Allen
Teresa Allen obtained her J.D. from Arizona State University College of Law in 1994. [bio][poetry]

Wayne R. Allen
Wayne Allen is Deputy Legislative Counsel for the Georgia General Assembly.  He received his undergraduate degree in forest resources from the University of Georgia in 1979. He worked for several years as a manager in private forest industry, then returned to law school toobtain his J.D. degree from Georgia in 1992. After law school, he clerked in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia. 

Nelson G. Alston
Nelson G. Alston, an African American poet/activist is the author of a collection of poetry entitled A Time for Glory and Hate: The American Civil Rights Movement (Denver: Alpha N Press, 1993). At one time, he was a trial attorney with the EEOC in Denver, Colorado.

Alston was born in 1946, obtained his B.A. from Howard University, his J.D. from the University of Michigan, and was admitted to practice in 1972. He has devoted his professional career to the enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its subsequent amendments. Alston is also a playwright and actor.

Dan Anderson
Dan Anderson does felony defense work for the office of the Pima County Legal Defender, in Tucson, Arizona. He received his MFA and JD degrees from the University of Arizona. Anderson was a fulltime freelance writer for a decade and a half. He co-authored Surviving Bankruptcy (Prentice-Hall, 1992) and is the pseudonymous author of the Hardy Boys mystery, The Desert Thieves (1996).  He tells us, "I published many interesting articles on such topics as RV bathroom technology, marketing strategies for motivational speakers, and the effects of gardening chemicals." It was the fear of his children going hungry, he says, that drove him to the practice of law. In recent years, he has been working on a novel while waiting for his clients to be brought to him at the county jail.  Someday, with his public defender pension, he expects "to become a real writer and poet again."

Laura I. Appleman
Laura Appleman is a professor of law at Williamette University.
[Laura Appleman]

Steve April
Steve April is the author of Poet in California (Barberry, 1992).

Angelica Aquino
Angelica Aquino is a lawyer, poet and community activist. Her legal work is in the field of immigration, labor, women's reproductive rights, and health issues in minority communities. She conducts poetry readings relating to women issues and Dominican art & culture seminars.

Peter Arcese
Peter Arcese is co-founder and president of Athanata Arts, Ltd., an independent publishing and production company, and is a practicing trusts and estates attorney. Arcese also teaches literature at NYU and performing poetry at HB Studio in Manhattan. He has translated Aeschylus' Agamemnon into English syllabic verse, as well as fragments of Sappho. His original poetry most recently appeared in New York Quarterly. [Peter Arcese]

Peter Arnold
Peter Arnold is a native of Evansville, Indiana. He practiced law for 34 years, retired from the practice in 1990, and now, with his wife, Carol Arnold, created Raintree Memoirs, to engage in the full time writing of memoirs for others. Arnold has published both poetry and non-fiction, including Wisdom of the Guides: Rocky Mountain Trout Guides Talk Fly Fishing (Frank Amato Publications, Inc., 1997), a book Arnold wrote when he lived in Montana. [Paul Arnold]

Chad Asarch
Chad Asarch is a principal in the form, Steele Properties LLC, a real estate company. [See: Chad Asarch, "A Lawyer's Lament," 35 (9) The Colorado Lawyer 45 (2006)]

Max B. Asbell
Max Asbell is a lawyer in Warner Robins, Georgia; he is the author of Poetry 'Facts' (Authorhouse, 2003) and Poetic Reflections on Life (Authorhouse, 2004).

Peter Ashman
Peter Ashman was born in 1952. He obtained his B.A. from the University of Maryland, and his J.D. from the University of Virginia in 1977 and was admitted to practice in 1977. He moved to Alaska in 1980 and practiced law, serving as a legal services lawyer in Native land claim cases, a magistrate in Dillingham, and public defender in the Matanuska Valley. He currently serves as a State District Court Judge in Anchorage.

Lee Wm. Atkinson
Lee Atkinson was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1949. He attended the University of Michigan, where he graduated in 1971, and from the University of Michigan Law School, in 1973. After his admission to the Bar in December of 1973, Atkinson worked as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Michigan. He then served as assistant prosecuting attorney in Detroit and chief of the criminal division for the prosecuting attorney's office in Lansing, Michigan. In March, 1980, Atkinson moved to Tampa, Florida, to become an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Florida where he became head of the narcotics section, supervising Federal drug prosecutions. From 1985 to 1992, Atkinson was Assistant State Attorney for the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit in Tampa, Hillsborough County, Florida. After leaving the State Attorneys office in 1993, Atkinson took up the private practice of law. He is now with the Tampa law firm, Forizs & Dogali. Atkinson is a published poet, an accomplished horseman, and fencer. [Source: personal communication with Lee Atkinson, August, 25, 2004] [Poems—Legal Studies Forum]

Barbara Atwood
Professor of Law, University of Arizona; won the Tucson Poetry Festival's Statewide Poetry Contest for her poem, "The Gift."

Bethami Auerbach
Bethami Auerbach was born in 1949 in Los Angeles. She practices environmental law in Washington, D.C. She has practiced part-time since 1987 so she can write fiction and pursue other interests. Earlier in her career, she worked on Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act issues at the Environmental Protection Agency. She taught law school at the University of Iowa for two years and at Temple University for a year.

Auerbach gave up creative writing while attending law school but returned to writing poetry soon after she finished law school. She attended the Iowa Writers Workshop in fiction, and received her M.F.A. in 1983, nine years after her graduation from Stanford Law School. (She obtained her B.A. from Pomona College in 1970 in international relations.) She is the author of The Off-Season, an as-yet unpublished baseball novel, and she is now at work on a second novel. She has had residencies at three artist colonies—Ragdale in Lake Forest, Illinois; Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York; and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Sweet Briar, Virginia.

Auerbach's poetry has been published in the collections Rye Bread:
Women Poets Rising (1977); In Her Own Image: Women Working in the Arts (1980); and The Ear's Chamber (1981). Her poem "The Search for the Perfect Rye Bread," along with two of her bread recipes, was reprinted in Bread Winners Too (1984).

Auerbach lives in Falls Church, Virginia, with her husband and their two cats. With her husband, she hosts a house concert series, "Sleepy Hollow Folk Club."

Susan Ayres
Susan Ayres lives in Fort Worth, Texas, with her husband and three children.  Her poetry has appeared in Kalliope, descant, Cimarron Review, Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, and other journals.  She has a J.D. from Baylor Law School and a Ph.D. from Texas Christian University. She currently, she teaches at Texas Wesleyan School of Law. [Poems—Legal Studies Forum (2006)]

David M. Bader
David M. Bader is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. After several years of corporate practice, he became a full-time writer, a pursuit that raises the eternal question, "From this he makes a living?"  His books include How to Be an Extremely Reform Jew (1994), Haikus for Jews: For You a Little Wisdom (1999), Zen Judaism: For You a Little Enlightenment (2002) and, most recently, Haiku U.: From Aristotle to Zola, One Hundred Great Books in Seventeen Syllables (2005).  He is also a contributor to Mirth of a Nation: The Best Contemporary Humor (2000) and More Mirth of a Nation: The Best Contemporary Humor (2002).  He is not even distantly related to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, though he insists on referring to her as "Aunt Ruth."  His web site can be found at http://www.extremely.com. [Poems—Legal Studies Forum] [ Law School Graduate Serves up Kosher Haikus with a Side of Chutzpah — Harvard Law Bulletin]

Brod Bagert
Brod Bagert is a former trial lawyer. He served at one time on the New Orleans City Council. In 1984, he published his first children's book, If Only I Could Fly. In 1992, at the age of 44, Bagert abandoned twenty years in the practice of law and became a full-time poet. Bagert's books, for children, include Let Me Be the Boss, Chicken Stocks, Elephant Games, and The Good Machine. He has published another five books for adults. Bagert is a professional, performing poet, appearing before groups around the United States. [Brod Bagert Homepage] [Poet Roundtable]

Mark Scott Bagula
Mark Scott Bagula received a Bachelor of Arts degree (in Political Science) from the University of California at San Diego and his law degree from the University of San Diego. He is an avid traveler, has studied in Hong Kong, lived in Taiwan (where he studied Chinese), and worked as a licensed stockbroker. He is now a trial attorney in San Diego. His poetry has appeared in Art Times, Ilya's Honey, Riverrun, Midwest Poetry Review, ZuZu's Petals, Poetry Motel, Phoenix, CER*BER*US, La Pierna Tierna, Fractal Translight Newsletter, Poet's Edge, Once Upon A World, Plainsongs, Barbaric Yawp, Ygdrasil, Eidetic Annals, Flipside, Sunday Suitor, Gallery Zandstraat, Micropress Midlands Poetry, Word Salad, Cosmic Serpent, Writer's Gazette, and Poetalk. [Three Poems] ["Thoughts in Sarajevo"]

Helen M. Bailey
Helen Bailey lives in West Gardiner, Maine and practices disability rights law in Augusta. Bailey was born in 1948, obtained a B.A. in philosophy from Fordham University in 1970 and her law degree from the University of Maine School of Law in 1978. [Poems—Legal Studies Forum] [Poems] [Poems—Legal Studies Forum (2006)]

Bryonn Bain
Bryonn Bain is an activist, spoken word poet, and a graduate of Harvard Law School.

Nancer Ballard
Nancer Ballard is a former senior partner at the law firm of Goodwin, Procter LLP and is currently Of Counsel at that firm. She is the author of Dead Reckoning, a collection of poetry (Good Gay Poets, 1978), and co-author of a children's book. Her poetry appears in Do Not Give Me Things Unbroken: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry to Honor and Celebrate Ottone M. Riccio (Lana Hechtman Ayers ed.)(Writers Club Press, 2002).

Richard S. Bank
Richard Bank was born in Philadelphia, graduated from Villanova Law School in 1968, and took up the practice of law, first in general practice, then, in 1972, as a public defender. He resigned from the Public Defender's office in 1979 to resume private practice, and focused on plaintiffs' negligence cases. In 1982, he returned to the Public Defender office to try major felony cases. Bank conducts CLE courses on Jury Techniques and is an adjunct professor at Villanova Law School. Bank's poetry has appeared in numerous small press poetry journals.[Source: Personal communication with Richard Bank]

[Poems] [Poems—Legal Studies Forum] [Poems—Legal Studies Forum] [Poems—Legal Studies Forum (2006)] [Two Poems]

Claire Sophia Bardos
Claire Bardos received her undergraduate degree from Indiana University and her law degree from the University of Southern California. She practiced law with a California firm doing representing municipalities and with another firm doing unemployment law and ERISA litigation. Bardos has now left the practice of law, and she lives in New Mexico.

Tom Barnes
Tom Barnes is a a Colorado lawyer. His senryu, "A Legal Senryu," was published in 34 (4) The Colorado Lawyer 27 (2005).

Peter Baroth
Peter Baroth was born in Chicago in 1963, raised in Oklahoma, and received his B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis in 1985 and his J.D. from Temple University Law School in 1990. He has previously worked in the field ofimmigration counselig. Baroth is the author of Long Green, a novel (published by iUniverse), and three chapbooks of poetry, Mounds of Silence, Sessions, and Ski Oklahoma, all published by Wordrunner Chapbooks. He is currently the moderator of the Monday Poets Series at the Philadelphia Free Library. Barolth is also an artist, musician and songwriter. [source: personal communication with Peter Baroth] [Poems] ["Saving Grace"] [Poems—Legal Studies Forum (2006)]

William A. (Bill) Baskin
Bill Baskin is an attorney for the city of Horn Lake, Mississippi. He was born in Marks, grew up in Clarksdale, graduated from Delta State University in 1980, and received his J.D. degree from the University of Mississippi in 1983. Baskin served as Municipal Judge for the City of Clarksdale, Mississippi, from 1986 to 1991 and opened an office in DeSoto County in 1993.

Howard L. Bass
Howard Bass was born on February 6, 1942 in Brooklyn, New York. He received his B.A. degree in 1963 from Adelphia College and his J.D. from Brooklyn Law School in 1966. He began writing poetry as an adolescent.

He was an associate trial attorney with Erdheim & Shalleck in New York City from 1967 to 1968, and with Blumenthal, Barandes, Bass, Matson & Arnold, also in New York City from 1970 to 1972. He joined Mitchell, Salem, Fisher & Kemper in 1974. Bass has also served as a lecturer at the New School for Social Research.

His poetry appears in various anthologies and literary journals. [Source: Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2004]

Daniel W. Bates
Gardiner, Maine lawyer; author of "The Ballad of the Beantown Bosox"

Don Bauermeister
Alaska lawyer

Roberta Beary
Roberta Beary is a finance attorney at a small law firm located at Dupont Circle, in Washington, DC. Her poetry, primarily haiku, has been published in Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Woodnotes, Haiku International and in A New Resonance 2: Emerging Voices in English Language Haiku (Jim Kacian & Dee Evetts, eds., Red Moon Press, 2001)(and in many of the Red Moon anthologies). Beary was born in 1954 in New York City. She currently resides in Bethseda, Maryland. [Roberta Beary] ["all day with Roberta"] [Thee Poems] [Haiku] [Roberta Beary haiku]

Christine Beck

Gerald Beckman
Gerlad Beckamn was born and raised on a farm in West Texas and beginning in 1966, practiced law for 25 years. Now retired, he has hiked through Ireland, Scotland, Germany, France, Spain and Peru, biked through Belgium, Holland and Germany, and back-packed in various places in the U.S. In addition to novels and short stories, he has reputedly written "some poetry." [Gerald Beckman]

Mel Belin
Mel Belin was born in Hazelton, Pennsylvania and obtained his B.A. from Dartmouth College, and his J.D. from George Washington University. His first book of poetry, Flesh That Was Chrysalis, was published by Word Works, Inc., in 1999. Belin's poetry has appeared in Midstream, Poet Lore, Connecticut River Review, Phoebe, The Cape Rock, Jewish Spectator and the Legal Studies Forum.

Belin formerly worked as attorney in the General Counsel's Office, Department of Housing and Urban Development. He is now retired and resides in Arlington, Virginia. [Homepage][Mel Belin][Poems--Legal Studies Forum][Iberian Travels--poems--Legal Studies Forum]["Twins"] [Poetry] ["Mother"]

James Scott Bell
James Scott Bell was born in 1954. He is the author of a poetry collection, The Night Carl Sagan Stepped on My Cat (1988) and numerous novels. [James Scott Bell]

Michelle Ben-Hur
Michelle Ben-Hur is a poet and attorney in Orange County, California. Her poetry appears in Beyond The Valley of the Contemporary Poets 1997 Anthology (Sacred Beverage Press, 1998) and Robert Wynne (ed.), The Poets Behind: An Anthology of Orange County Poets (Valley Contemporary Press, 1997). Ben-Hur is editor of 51%, a literary journal which publishes poetry and short stories by and for women.

Lisa Calame Berg
Lisa Berg is a graduate of Carleton College, William Mitchell College of Law, and is studying for a MFA in fiction and poetry at Hamline University. She worked as an attorney for over twenty years, primarily as a prosecutor in Minneapolis.

Shelley Berger
Shelley Berger resides in Santa Monica, California. She is a former lawyer; her poetry has appeared in Paris Review.

Alice K. Berke
Alice Berke was born in 1963. She obtained her B.A. from State University of New York at Albany and her J.D. from St. John's University School of Law in 1986. She worked for the New York City Department of Investigation, and then, in 1989 took up the private practice of law. [Bio]

Dave Berman
Dave Berman is a Pennsylvania lawyer.

David Berman
David Berman is a Massachusetts lawyer and member of the Powow River Poets. [Source: The Boston Globe, April 27, 2006]

Berman is a graduate of the University of Florida, and has studied at Johns Hopkins University and Boston University. He obtained his law degree from Harvard Law School where he studied with Archibald MacLeish.

Berman's work has also appeared in numerous magazines, including Counter Measures, The Formalist, Harvard Magazine, Piedmont Literary Review, The Epigrammatist, Sparrow, Iambs & Trochees , and Orbis. He has also published three chapbooks: Future Imperfect (State Street Press Chapbooks, 1982), Slippage (Robert L. Barth, 1996), and David Berman: Greatest Hits 1965-2002 (Pudding House, 2002).

Herb Berman
Herb Berman is a resident of Deerfield, Illinois, and a retired lawyer, and sometime labor arbitrator. In 2007, he had poems published in Humanistic Judaism.

Anthony Bernini
Anthony Berini, an Albany, New York lawyer is general counsel of Eden Park Health Services, Inc. Berini was born in New York City in 1949, obtained his B.A. from Hamilton College and his J.D. from Albany Law School. He is the author of a collection of poetry titled Distant Kinships (A.P.D., 2002).

Maurice Powell Bibby

Patsy Anne Bickerstaff
Patsy Bickerstaff was born, in Virginia, on January 7, 1940. She obtained her B.A. in 1963, and her J.D. in 1978 from the University of Richmond. She is the author of three collections of poems: City Rain (Librado Press, 1989), Chained to a Post: Poems of Virginia (1994), Mrs. Noah's Journal (San Francisco Bay Press, 2006). Bickerstaff has served as President of the Poetry Society of Virginia, and the Virginia Writers Club. Her work has appeared in over a 100 journals and magazines.

Stan Biderman
Stan Biderman, the son of Holocaust survivors who migrated to Texas after WW II, was born in Dallas in 1951. He now lives in Austin. His first language was Yiddish. Biderman attended the University of Texas where he received both his undergraduate and law degree. He practiced law for fifteen years and now works as business consultant. He is the author of a book of poetry entitled, Everything Changes: A Spiritual Journey (Plainview Press, 1996). [Poems—Legal Studies Forum]

Lynne Bigley
Lynne Bigley is a Nevada civil rights attorney; we disccovered her poetry in the Avatar Review. Her poetry has also appeared in Red Rock Review, Crescent Moon Journal, and kaleidowhirl.   Bigley works with the Neveda Disability Advocacy & Law Center. ["August Affair"] ["Where Do Butterflies Go in a Hurricane?"]

Nicki Blake
Nicki Blake is a Seattle lawyer.

Thomas L. Blaske
Thomas L. Blaske is a partner in the Ann Arbor, Michigan law firm, Blaske & Blaske, specializing in medical and legal malpractice and complex personal injury cases. He received his B.A. from the University of Michigan and his J.D. from Michigan Law School. His poetry has appeared in The New Yorker magazine.

John Kuhn Bleimaier
John Bleimaier describes himself as a farmer, essayist, lawyer, poet, philosopher, activist, and bibliophile. Bleimaier was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, July 29, 1950; he obtained his B.A. from Columbia College (1971), his M.I.A. from Columbia University School of International Affairs (1973), and his law degree from St. John's University School of Law (1975); he was admitted to the bar in 1975; he now practices in Princeton, New Jersey

Joan Blessing
Joan Thiel Blessing received her J.D. from Rutgers School of Law—Newark in 1985. Originally from Cincinnati, she spent many years in central New Jersey where she raised her children and worked as an editor, lawyer, and public official. She now divides her life between Hendersonville North Carolina and Naples, Florida. Her poems have appeared most recently in Flashquake, The Moonwort Review, Pinesong: Awards 2006, Kakalak 2007, and The Christian Science Monitor.["Indian Summer Garden Party"] ["Biology Lessons"]

Gloria Bletter
Gloria Bletter began New York Law School (prompted by the women's movement) in 1970, after having graduated from City College of New York, eight years prior. She wrote poetry before that, and after her retirement, she took up the study of poetry as a graduate student in creative writing.  Her law practice, of 25-years' duration, concentrated on elder law and tenants' rights.  She received a Certificate in International Affairs in the hopes of working in international and indigenous peoples' human rights, and did represent two international NGO's at the UN for several years.

Michael Blumenthal
Michael Blumenthal is the author of the memoir All My Mothers and Fathers (Harper Collins, 2002), and of Dusty Angel (BOA Editions, 1999), his sixth book of poems. His novel Weinstock Among the Dying was published in l994, and his collection of essays from Central Europe, When History Enters the House, in 1998. Formerly Director of Creative Writing at Harvard, he has lived in, and taught at universities in Hungary, Israel, Germany and France, mostly as a Fulbright Fellow. In 2004 and 2005, he held the Acuff Chair of Excellence in the Creative Arts at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee. He spends his summers in a small village near the shores of Lake Balaton in Hungary, and presently is on leave from his position at Université François-Rabelais in France living in Budapest. [Michael Blumenthal]

Ace Boggess
Ace Boggess is a novelist, playwright, and widely published poet. He resides in Huntington, West Virginia. Boggess graduated from Marshall University and received his law degree from West Virginia University. He is the author of Socrates Said, a Play (Grimpenmire Press, Oregon: 1996); two poetry chapbooks, Desire's Orchestra (TLD Press, 1998) and The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Not Fulfilled (highwire press, 2003); and six unpublished literary novels. Boggess does not practice law, having decided to devote himself to literary pursuits. In addition to his poetry and fiction writing, Boggess is associate editor of The Adirondack Review. [Ace Boggess] [poems] [two poems] [Senior Editor-The Adirondack Review] [Poems—Legal Studies Forum]

Robert Boliek
Robert Boliek was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, February 13, 1958. He obtained his B.A. from Auburn University in 1980, his J.D. from the University of Alabama in 1986 and his M.F.A. from the University of Alabama in 1999. He was articles editor of the Alabama Law Review and served as law clerk to Chief Justice C.C. Torbert, Jr., Alabama Supreme Court (1986-1987) and to Justice J. Gorman Houston, Alabama Supreme Court (1987-1988).

Boliek practices law in Birmingham, Alabama, where he focuses on appellate work and serves as adjunct professor of insurance law and an instructor in lawyering skills and legal reasoning at Samford University's Cumberland School of Law. His poetry has appeared in The Formalist, New Orleans Review, RE:AL, The MacGuffin, Troubadour, Hellas, and Edge City Review, among other journals. He has a first collection of poems, "Museum-Pieces," for which he is now seeking a publisher. He is presently writing a novel. [Meditations on a Book of Hours] [Poems—Legal Studies Forum]

Cynthia Bond
Cynthia Bond is a professor of law at John Marshall Law School (in Chicago). She was born in 1961, obtained her B.A. from the University of Illinois in 1983, and her MFA from Illinois in 1987. She graduated from Cornell law school in 1993. She served as a legal services lawyer in Ithaca, New York, entered private practice, and then joined the law firm, True, Walsh & Miller, located in Ithaca. She joined the John Marshall faculty in 2004.

Professor Bond's poem, "What You Want Means What You Can Afford," first published in Ascent was selected for the anthology, The Best American Poetry 1994, edited by A.R. Ammons, published by Simon & Schuster in 1994.

The bio in The Best American Poetry 1994 indicates that Bond was born in Stoneham, Massachusetts but grew up in Illinois.

Terri K. Borchers
Terri Borchers was an attorney and administrative law judge in Oregon for twelve years and then returned to academia to obtain her MA and MFA degrees in English/Poetry, and to begin her work on a Ph.D.

Christopher W. Boyden
[Christopher W. Boyden]

Jim Boyer
Jim Boyer (James Max Boyer) was born in 1949, in Tacoma, Washington. He obtained his B.A. from the University of California-Davis. In 1969 he became a Tibetan Buddhist novice monk. In 1976, Boyer graduated from the University of San Francisco School of Law. He is the author of a collection of poems, Hard/Light Love (Light Knight Publications, 1992). Boyer, somewhere along the way, moved to Homer, Alaska where he lived on a homestead.

Sara Jane Boyers
Sara Boyers is a former music industry attorney/executive and personal manager of performers, who changed directions to become a writer. She is a graduate of the University of California (Berkeley & Los Angeles) with a B.F.A. in Art History and holds a J.D. from the University of Southern California Law School.

Boyers has created a popular series of illustrated books on contemporary art and poetry, her first book, Life Doesn't Frighten Me (Stewart, Tabori & Chang), is an award-winning pairing of the expressive art of Jean-Michel Basquiat and a 1978 poem by Maya Angelou (Publishers Weekly "Best Book of 1993," NYPL "Best Books for Teenagers," ALA "Books for Reluctant YA Readers"). Boyers' second book, O Beautiful for Spacious Skies (Chronicle Books) combines the whimsical paintings of Wayne Thiebaud with the famous hymn, "America the Beautiful," written by a 19th century educator, poet and suffragette, Katharine Lee Bates.

Teen Power Politics: Make Yourself Heard (The Millbrook Press), Boyers' most recent publication, is an issue-oriented book on civil and political activism for young readers. (VOYA's Nonfiction Honor List; BankStreet "Best Books of 2001"; NYPL 2001 Books for the Teen Age; Chicago Public Schools' 2002 Recommended Reading).

A resident of Southern California, Boyers is a contributor to print journals and websites, a lecturer on issues of civic and political involvement, and the creator/owner of an e-newsletter and website designed for youth. Boyers has an author website which also features her photographic work. [Interview] [Poems—Legal Studies Forum] ["Black Rothko"]

David Boyle
David Boyle was a law student at the University of Michigan Law School when his poem, "Androgenius," appeared in the Michigan Journal of Gender & Law (Vol. 8, 2001, p. 99).

James H. Bradner, Jr.
James Bradner is a Highland Park, Illinois lawyer. His poetry (that we have located to date) can be found in the ABA Journal, vol. 61 (9)(Sept. 1975), p. 1148.

Dania Deschamps-Braly
  Dania Deschamps is a litigation attorney, poet and world traveler.  She was born in Key West, and currently resides in Ada, Oklahoma. She is the author of Thirst.

Silvia Antonia Brandon-Pérez
Silvia Brandon-Pérez was born in Havana, Cuba in 1949. She is an editor, author, and lawyer, and presently edits the Spanish edition of Poems Niederngasse. Her own poems, in Spanish and English, appear largely in poetry zines. [poem]

R. Frost Branon
Frost Branon is a lawyer and mediator. He graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1964, and obtained his law degree from North Carolina in 1967. He practices law in North Carolina. Branon is the author of a collection of poetry, A Kenning of Roses (Mellen Poetry Press, 1994) and an unpublished collection, The Contagion of Silence. [Source: Branon Website]

Sherry Brashear
Sherry Brashear was born July 6, 1950 in a cabin in Knowx County, Kentucky. She received her bachelor's and master's degree from Eastern Kentucky University, did doctoral work at the University of Kentucky and received her law degree from Northern Kentucky University. Brashear was admitted to practice in 1982 and began practicing law in eastern Kentucky. From 1987 to 1992 she held various positions with the United Mine Workers of America. Brashear's father was a coal miner for 36 years and died of black-lung disease. [Source: "My Millennium," Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky), p. 9a, May 31, 2000]

Matthew Brenneman
"Matthew Brenneman was born in 1960 and raised in Connecticut. He graduated from Tufts University in 1983 and obtained his J.D. degree from Duke Law School in 1986. After employment with law firms in New Haven and Baltimore, Mr. Brenneman served as assistant general counsel with Sylvan Learning Systems and as general counsel to Caliber Learning Network, a Sylvan affiliate he helped take public. Since 1999, Brenneman has been a sole practitioner specializing in corporate and transactional law. His poetry has appeared in Poetry, Nebraska Review and Sewanee Theological Review.  Brenneman currently resides in Marblehead, Massachusetts, where, he tells us, he "revels in his sailboat and complains about the weather." [Source: Personal communication, May 3, 2006]

John Briscoe
[identified as a San Franciso lawyer and poet, San Jose Mercury News, March 5, 2003 (Carolyn Jung, "Tadich Grill is a Serving of Old San Francisco," p. 3F)]

David Bristol
David Bristol was born in 1948, grew up in Verona, New Jersey, and has lived in Arlington, Virginia for 25 years. Bristol graduated from New York University and obtained his law degree from George Washington University. Bristol has published three collections of poetry, The Monk Who Made His Momma Happy ( Bunny and the Crocodile Press, 1977), Paradise & Cash (Washington, D.C.: Washington Writers Publishing House, 1980), and Toad and Other Poems (Bunny and the Crocodile Press, 2002). Bristol is a staff attorney at the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. [Poems] [Poems from Toad and other Poems] ["White Shirt"]

Christopher Q. Britton
Chris Britton was born on September 17, 1943 in Toledo, Ohio. He obtained his B.A. from the University of Iowa in 1965, and his J.D. from Duke University in 1968. He was admitted to practiced in 1968 and then served as a Captain in the United States Marine Corp from 1968 to 1971. He is now a trial lawyer and a partner in the law firm Ferris & Britton in San Diego, California, as well as the author of poetry, short stories, and a novel, Paybacks (Donald I. Fine, 1985). [Source: Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2003] ["Marie's Mistake"]

Harry Brody
Harry Brody was born and raised in Ottumwa, Iowa. He received did his undergraduate work at New College where he received his BA in 1982. Brody's law degree, which is obtained in 1985, is from Duke. Brody was a Robert Frost Fellow in Poetry at Breadloaf in 1993. He lives in Sarasota, Florida and is legal counsel to death-row inmates. Brody's collection of poetry, Fields (Ion Books/Raccoon) was published in 1987. He has two chapbooks: As Once to Birth I Went Now I Am Taken Back (New Collage Press, 1982), For We Are Constructing the Dwelling of Feeling by Object Lesson (1993. [A poem] ["Epistle for William Sylvester"]

Angela Brooks
Angela Brooks, from Birmingham, Alabama, is currently a law student. She obtained her B.A. from Stillman College and writes under the pen name Pink Poet. [Angela Brooks]

Lee Warner Brooks (A.B., University of Michigan; M.A., University of Pennsylvania; J.D., University of Michigan Law School) began writing sonnets in 2004; he has also written several novels. He has recently published sonnets in The Iowa Review, Passager, Light, Poetry in Performance, and the on-line Bear River Review. The working title of his sonnet collection is Novlets. He has been a Yellow Cab driver in Ann Arbor, an editor and writer for publishers in Pennsylvania and Maryland, and a partner in the litigation department of the law firm of Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn in Detroit, Michigan. Currently, he teaches writing at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

Norman E. Brown
Norman E. Brown lives in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Brown, a lawyer, poet, and anthropologist is the author of Everyone's Browsing Book of Worthy Quotations published in 1998.

David R. Browning
[poetry]

Mark Corwin Bruce
MC Bruce was born in Orange, California in 1956, survived spinal meningitis at 3, and so he says, "drank a little paint thinner at 5 but still made it." A lonely child, he became a reader. He joined the Air Force at 17 and was stationed in Karamursel, Turkey (just as operations were closed due to Cypress) and San Vito, Italy. After the war, he worked on construction and in a warehouse, and as a singing telegram deliveryman.

Bruce attended Humboldt State University where he worked as a radio announcer and as a reporter/photojournalist for a weekly newspaper. He graduated from UC Berkeley law school in 1987. After law school, he worked as a public defender, but was seduced by the allure of big firm work. He "did time" at Kindel & Anderson for about a year and a half, and was laid-off. He then became a solo practitioner, doing criminal law, business litigation, bankruptcy and worker's compensation cases. A self-described "terrible businessman," he "was happy when the Public Defender in Orange County called" to ask him to rejoin the public defender's office.

Bruce's poetry has appeared in Rattle, Poesy, Urban Spaghetti, and other journals, as well as in two Orange County poetry anthologies. He publishs a small literary magazine, The Blue Moose, now in its sixth year of publication. He also runs a small poetry chapbook press, Swan Duckling and is host of Poet's Cafe, which airs on KPFK the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month, "when they remember to play it."

Bruce's poetry chapbooks include Clients (which includes poems about his experiences as a lawyer), Ungiven Eulogies (a poem cycle about Bruce's teacher and mentor), At Dalton's Coffee Shop (Inevitable Press). [M.C. Bruce] [Poems—Legal Studies Forum] [Blog]

Jay Bryan
Jay Bryan lives near Carrboro, North Carolina and is an attorney/mediator specializing in family and juvenile law. He also serves as a guardian ad litem in civil custody cases and as a parent coordinator helping parents in high conflict custody disputes.  He graduated from Yale University in 1971 with a B.A. in English and received his J.D. from North Carolina Central University in l977.

Bryan is the author of Haiku for Carroll (Jay Bryan, 1994) and the organizer of an annual poetry reading for a local celebration known as Carrboro Day. He originated the idea of a Carrboro poet laureate; Carrboro is the only town in North Carolina with one!  [Source: Personal communication with Jay Bryan] [Poems—Legal Studies Forum (2006)]

Alan Buckholtz
Alan Buckholtz started writing poetry in 2004; attended Occidental College and UCLA; born and raised in Los Angeles

Richard Alan Bunch
Richard Bunch was born in 1945, and has taught law, and philosophy, at various institutions. Bunch recieved his BA from Stanford in 1967, his MA from the University of Arizona in 1969, an Doctorate in Divinity from Vanderbilt, and his J.D. from the University of Memphis in 1980. Bunch practice in Memphis with the firm Horne & Peppel from 1981 to 1983. He is the author of several collections of poetry including: Summer Hawk ( Norton Coker Press, 1991), Wading the Russian River (Norton Coker Press, 1993), A Foggy Morning (Mandrake Press, 1996)(Gliwice, Poland), Santa Rosa Plums (Nardu Gras Press, 1996), Rivers of the Sea and Other Poems (Phoenix Press, 1996), Sacred Space (Dry Bones Press, 1996), A Foggy Morning (1996), South by Southwest (1997), Greatest Hits: 1970-2000 (Pudding House Publications, 2001), Running for Daybreak (Mellen Press, 2004). Bunch is also the author of Night Blooms (Norton Coker Press, 1992)(selections from the author's journal, chiefly on the subjects of philosophy, religion, and literature, covering the years 1970-1982). He now resides in Davis, California.

Robert H. Bunzel
Robert Bunzel was born in 1955, and lives in Piedmont, California. He is a practicing trial attorney in San Francisco and managing partner of his firm of 30 attorneys. His poems have appeared in local and national journals including Soundings East, Block’s Poetry Journal, Orphic Lute, Oxygen, Illya’s Honey, and Poet Magazine. Bunzel graduated from Harvard in 1978 and from the University of California in San Francisco (Hastings College of the Law) in 1981. His legal practice has involved foreign appearances in Europe and Asia, and now focuses on white collar crime and business torts. He has also represented NFL owners and players, and one of his trials was nationally televised.

Bunzel has been president of the board of the literary tri-quarterly Zyzzyva since 2002. He is a founding director for a non-profit board in Hana Maui dedicated to the preservation of native Hawaiian culture, and was President of the San Francisco Lawyers’ Club American Inn of Court (2003-2004). [Poems—Legal Studies Forum] [Poems—Legal Studies Forum (2006)]

Marie E. Burke
Maire Burke was born in 1962. She obtained an A.L.B. degree and her J.D. from Harvard University. She was admitted to practice in 1994, served as a law clerk for Federal District Court Judge Reginald C. Lindsay and as an associate at the law firm of Foley Hoag LLP. At Harvard Law School, Burke was managing editor of the Harvard Women's Law Journal. Her poem, "Antonia," appears in 17 Harv. Women's L.J. 224 (1994). Burke is now with the Office of Justice Programs, Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.

Mark Burke

Beverly Ray Burlingame
Burlingham is an attorney with the Dallas law firm, Thompson & Knight. Her poem, "Polar Persuasion" appears in Scribes Journal of Legal Writing (1992).

Dan Burnstein
Dan Burnstein lives in South Boston, Massachusetts and teaches at Gibbs College. Burnstein is also a photographer.

Deborah Sirotkin Butler
Deb Butler is a family law and appellate attorney. She is originally from Michigan, but has been living in Massachusetts since 1983, when she was admitted to practice law. She obtained her B.A. from Michigan State University (1970) and her J.D. from Wayne University (1983). Butler is a first-generation Russian-American. Her undergraduate studies were in Russian, art history, and fine art. [Poems—Legal Studies Forum]

Kate Butler
Kathleen C. Butler is on the faculty at Thomas M. Cooley Law School. In high school. She won the Illinois state high school poetry reading contest and now performs her own poetry at various venues. Butler was born in 1954, and obtained her B.S.S. in 1976 and her M.A.T. in 1979 from Northwestern University. Her law degree, in 1989, is from the University of Illinois. She practiced law in Indianapolis from 1989 to 1992. She then moved to Bloomington, Illinois where she practiced from 1992 to 1995 when she joined the Thomas M. Cooley Law School faculty.

Shahid Buttar
Shahid Buttar graduated from Stanford Law School in 2003. His legal practice has included cases involving same-sex marriage rights in the State of New York and a challenge to federal campaign finance regulations on behalf of the House co-sponsors of the 2002 McCain-Feingold Act. He is an organizer of political artists' collectives. [bio]

Alicia Caban-Wheeler
Alicia Caban-Wheeler resides in Athens, Georgia. One of her poems appeared in the Harvard Women's Law Journal (vol. 20, p. 310, 1997).

Mario Arcala Cabral
Mario Arcala Cabral was born in 1963 in the Dominican Republic, where his family is of European descent. He is a lawyer, criminal investigator, athlete, poet, composer, and self-educated in music and painting.

Daniel M. Caine
Dan Caine is a Seattle attorney. Caine was born in 1942 in the Los Angeles area, where he was reared and educated. He is a graduate of Loyola University of Los Angeles and of UCLA Law School. Caine served in the Navy Judge Advocate General's office after law school with two years as Legal Officer of the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk. He is presently of counsel with Ryan, Swanson & Cleveland, PLLC in Seattle, where his practice emphasis is on creditors’ rights, secured transactions and bankruptcy. Caine is actively involved with the Washington State Bar, and is a past-chair of the Washington Governor’s Small Business Improvement Council.

Caine's first published poem appeared in San Diego Magazine in 1974. His poetry (written sporadically), has appeared in Washington State Bar News, Puget Soundings Magazine, San Francisco Daily Journal and Magnolia News. His poetry in recent years has been primarily law-related. [Poems—Legal Studies Forum]

Gregory B. Cairns
Gregory B. Cairns is a workers' compensation defense attorney in Colorado. [See: Gregory B. Cairns, "Love Letters," 35 (9) The Colorado Lawyer 46 (2006)]

Joseph Caldwell
Joseph Caldwell is an attorney in Charleston, West Virginia, in the law firm, Caldwell & Riffee. His chapbook of poetry, Sabbatical on Winifrede Hollow was published in 1993 by Trillium Press (St. Albans, West Virginia)(with a second edition appearing in 1998). In 1992 he won a writer's fellowship from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts. Caldwell's poems also appear in Barbara Smith and Kirk Judd (eds.), Wild Sweet Notes: Fifty Years of West Virginia Poetry 1950-1999 (Publishers Place, 2000).

Caldwell received his B.A. degree from West Virginia University in 1969 and his law degree from the University of Florida in 1974 and was admitted to the West Virginia bar in 1974. He was born in Charleston, West Virginia, July 17, 1947. [Poems—Legal Studies Forum] [Two Poems: "Point Mountain" and "South Side Bridge"] [Poems—Legal Studies Forum]

Esther Beatrice Cameron
Esther Cameron, a long-time Madison, Wisconsin resident, was born on September 10, 1941 in New York City. She obtained her M.A. in 1966, and her Ph.D. in German from the University of California-Berkeley; her Ph.D. dissertation was on Paul Celan. From 1980 to 1990, she worked in Jerusalem as a translator and editor.She obtained her J.D. from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1993. From 1994 to 1995 she edited the newsletter of Shaarei Shamayim for Madison's Reconstructionist and Jewish Renewal Congregation, and was active in interfaith work. Since 1995, she has edited a poetry magazine, The Neovictorian/Cochlea.

Cameron is the author The Consciousness of Earth, a blank verse epic, and has published poetry in English, Hebrew and German. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Sulphur, Tikkun, Les Nouveaux Cahiers, and the Legal Studies Forum. [Poems—Legal Studies Forum] [poems] ["Corpses Clog The Litmags"] ["Birthday of a Courier"] ["The World's Last Rose: Sonnets for the Prince of Twilight"] ["Earthwake and Its Sources"] [a review of Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines] ["A Brief For Didactic Poetry"] [an editor's reply] [Point & Circumference: Esther Cameron's Website] [An Essay on Art in the Legal Fiction of Lowell B. Komie]

Arthur Campbell
Arthur Campbell is a professor of law, at California Western University. [profile] [homepage — with poems] [Trial & Error] [Interview]

Simone Campbell
Simone Campbell is National Coordinator of Network, a Catholic social justice lobby in Washington, D.C., and former executive director of Jericho, an interfaith lobby group that focuses on health care, welfare and affordable housing issues. She is a nun, lawyer, and published poet. She obtained her J.D. from the University of California at Davis and has a certificate in social work. She practice poverty law in Oakland for 18 years. [Source: Common Dreams news article] [Faith in Public Life profile]

Paloma Capanna
Paloma Capanna is a family law and matrimonial attorney in Rochester, New York and founder and national co-chair of Poets for Peace (along with another lawyer/poet, Ilya Kaminsky). She is the author of three chapbooks, including Woman and How Silent is the Woman. She resides in Webster, New York. [Paloma Capanna] [Poem: "Justice and Peace Shall Kiss"]

Joseph Carcel
Joseph Carcel's poetry has appeared in Melic Review, Neidergasse, and Writer's Block. He is an attorney in New York.

Charisse Carney-Nunes
Charisse Carney-Nunes is freelance writer and attorney. She graduated from Lincold University in Pennsylvnaia, the nation's oldest historically Black college, where she was the Poet Laureate of the University for two years. She is also a graduate of Harvard University's JFK School of Government and the Harvard Law School. She resides in Washington, D.C. [Source: Charissee Carney-Nunes, Songs of a Sistermom: Motherhood Poems (Brand Nu Words, 2004)]

Robert L. Carothers
Carothers became the 10th president of the University of Rhode Island in 1991. From 1986 to 1991, Carothers was chancellor of the Minnesota State University System, and prior to that, president of Southwest State University. He was educated at Edinboro University, obtained his doctorate from Kent State University and his law degree from the University of Akron.

Adela Carrasco
Adela Carrasco was born in Los Angeles, raised in San Jose, California, educated in Northern California, resides and practices law in Los Angeles.

Charles Carreon
Charles Carreon resides in Ashland, Oregon. He was born in 1956, and attended Southern Oregon State College where he recieved his B.A. He obtained his J.D. from the University of California School of Law at Los Angeles and was admitted to the bar in 1987.

Jo Carrillo
Jo Carrillo is a Professor of Law at Hastings College of Law, where she joined the faculty in 1991. She received her B.A. degree from Stanford University (1981), her J.D. from the University of New Mexico (1986), and returned to Stanford University where for her J.S.D. degree (1996). Professor Carillo teaches American Indian Law, Critical Race Theory, Property, Wills and Trusts. Her poetry appears in This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color and has been published in German and Spanish.

Doritt Carroll
Doritt Carroll was educated at Georgetown University. Her poems have appeared in Slipstream, Rattle, Poetry Depth Quarterly, Maryland Poetry Review, Plainsongs and other journals.

Karl W. Carter, Jr.
Karl Carter was born in New Orleans in 1944, moved with his family to Los Angeles when he was in 3rd grade and resides and practices law in Washington, D.C. He is in private practice specializing in racial discrimination law. Carter attended Tennessee State University and began writing poetry while at Howard University where he obtained his law degree.

Carter authored two small poetry publications in the early 1970s, A Season in Sorrow and Three Poems, both published by Broadside Press in Detroit. His poetry appears in The Poet Upstairs: An Anthology of Washington Area Poets (Octave Stevenson, ed., 1979) and in Stephen Henderson (ed.), Understanding the New Black Poetry: Black Speech and Black Music as Poetic Reference (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1973). [Poems—Legal Studies Forum] [For a newspaper article on Karl Carter and other Washington, D.C. area lawyer/poets, see Myra Mensh Patner, "Motions and Meter Lawyers as Poets," Washington Post, March 13, 1980, p. D5]

Robin Caton
Robin Caton is a visual artist and poet whose art has been exhibited at the San Francisco Center for the Book (2002) and at the Artisan's Gallery in Mill Valley (1999). Her book of poetry, The Color of Dusk was published by Omnidawn Publishing in 2001. Caton was a practicing lawyer for 15 years. [Robin Caton: Susie Makes Art — San Francisco Public Library]

Isidore Century
Isidore Century is a New York City attorney. His poems have appeared in Chelsea Review, Midstream, Best Jewish Writing 2003, and other journals. He is the author of a book of poetry titled, From the Coffee House of Jewish Dreamers: Poems of Wonder and Wandering.

Christopher Cessac
Christopher Cessa lives in Marfa, Texas. He obtained degrees in history and English from Texas A&M and in law from the University of Michigan Law School, and an M.A. from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. His poetry has appeared in The Antioch Review, Black Warrior Review, Cimarron Review, Cream City Review, Epoch, Mid-American Review, Salt Hill, Sycamore Review, and other journals and magazines. He has a collection of poetry, Republic Sublime, which was published by Zoo Press in 2003. [Two poems]

Greg Chaimov
After serving as the Oregon Legislative Assembly's chief counsel, Greg Chaimov became an attorney in private practice in Portland, Oregon. He is a graduate of Carleton College and the Northwestern School of Law at Lewis and Clark College. He studied poetry at the University of Iowa and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. His poetry and short fiction has appeared in journals in the United States and Canada. A chapbook, The Old World, was published by the William Stafford Center in 2005. [The Old World]

Susan Stevens Chambers
Susan Chambers, is with the law firm Chesley, Kroon, Chambers & Harvey, Mankato, Minnesota. Her legal practice areas are employment and family law. Chambers was poet laureate of the League of Minnesota Poets and served as president of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies.

Walker L. Chandler
Walker Chandler is a Zebulon, Georgia lawyer who has being to limit his practice to permit him to devote time to other projects: "the design and development of a riverboat, developing a screenplay based upon his novel "The Evangeline Manuscript" as well as other screenplay[s], books, and literary efforts including a book of poetry." [Walker L. Chandler]

Eileen "Ai-lin" Chang
Ai-lin was born in Taipei and came to New York City in 1968 when she was 7. She attened Harvard University and Columbia Law School. She practiced law on Wall Street, with the Office of the Governor of New York, and for a biotech company. She now devotes her time to her art assemblies for which she writes poems. [Ail-Lin]

Jerry Chasen
Jerry Chasen is an estate planning attorney, poet, teacher, life coach, and lecturer. He received his B.A. from Tufts University (1973), his JD from New York University School of Law (1976), and his LL.M in Estate Planning from the University of Miami Law School (1993) where he served as an adjunct in the LL.M Estate Planning and Taxation program. He is also the executive director of The Advisors Project, an effort he established to encourage professional advisers to create relationships with their clients that promote philanthropy. Chasen's poetry is often written for specific seasons and holidays; a collection title “On Occasion” is forthcoming.

Jim Chastain II
Jim Chastain lives in Norman, Oklahoma and is a lawyer for the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. He previously worked for the Oklahoma Insurance Department and two private law firms. He is the film critic for four Oklahoma newspapers, including The Norman Transcript. His film reviews also appear on the popular Internet website, <rotten tomatoes>. His latest screenplay was well received at the Austin Film Festival. Chastain's memoir, I Survived Cancer, but Never Won the tour de France was published by Hawk Publishing in 2006. His first book of poetry, Like Some First Human Being is scheduled for publication in November, 2006. [Jim Chastain's Homepage]

David Chester
David Chester is a poet, actor, and lawyer in Tallahassee, Florida, where he lives with his poet-wife, Ginny Grimsley; his five-year-old, demagogue-daughter, Eliot; his shaman-pug, Owen; and his provocateur-calicos, Abbey and Gracie. His poetry has appeared in Antioch Review, The Quarterly, The Cape Rock, and elsewhere. [Poems—Legal Studies Forum (2006)]

David Childers
David Childers is a Mt. Holly, North Carolina criminal lawyer, poet, and musician. [David Childers Digital Home] Poems: [The Father of Wolves] [They Cursed Him] [Gastonia] [Sleet] [New Weather] [In the Country Auditorium] [Rainy Night]

Bentina Chisolm
Bentina Chisolm obtained her B.A. from North Carolina State University and her J.D. is from the University of Michigan (1994). Her poem, "Our Pain," appears in the Michigan Journal of Gener & Law (Vol. 2: 1, 1994).

William S. Chillingworth
Willima s. Chillingworth is a retired State District Court Judge who resides in Hawaii.

Robin Cravey
Robin Cravey is an attorney, environmental activist, and poet in Austin, Texas. He is the author of several collections of poetry: Night Falls in the Lost Pines, Enchanted Rock, and Other Poems (1989), Mentation, Diverging:Poems (1983). His his imprint, Titled Planet Press, he has published Titled Planet Poems and Titled Planet Tales. [Law Office of Robin Cravey]

Natty Chris
Chicago, Illinois [myspace.com bio]

D.L. Christian
D.L. Christian is a founding member of the Phoenix law firm, Harper, Christian, Dichter & Graif, P.C. His law practice is focused on civil litigation. He writes both fiction and poetry. Christian obtained his undergraduate degree in 1972 and his law degree in 1975, both from Arizona State University. [Source: D.L. Christian, Selected Poems Excerpted from Pocket Change, 41 Ariz. Att’y 37 (April 2005); Martindale Hubbell]

Sofia Cicatrize
Sofia Cicatrize is an ttorney and freelance writer. Her essays have appeared in the Washington Times, Houston Chronicle, Los Angeles Daily Journal, and American Enterprise.

Oscar Cisneros
Oscar Cisneros is the author of The Flower Queen. [Oscar S. Cisneros]

Rebecca Clark
Rebecca Clark works as an attorney coordinating a Volunteer Lawyer Program. Her poetry has appeared in various journals, including, Ilya’s Honey, Pebble Lake Review, Wicked Alice, and Gumball Poetry. She resides in Bow, Washington with her husband and daughter. [Poems—Legal Studies Forum] ["Confinement"][Poems—Legal Studies Forum (2006)]

Roger E. Clark
Roger E. Clark is a Colorado lawyer and served as president of the Colorado Bar Association. [See: Roger E. Clark, The Colorado Lawyer Poetry Contest—Lawyers and Their Muses, 35 (9) The Colorado Lawyer 35 (2006)]

William S. Cohen
"William S. Cohen was born in Bangor, Maine, in 1940. After graduating from Bowdoin College, where he was a Latin major and an All-State basketball player, in 1962, he received his law degree from the Boston University Law School in 1965. Admitted to the bar in that same year, he became a partner in a Bangor law firm and, in 1968, Assistant County Attorney for Penobscot County. He was first elected to public office as a city council member in Bangor, a position in which he served from 1969 to 1972, and became the major of that city for the 1971 to 1972 term.

In 1972, Cohen walked 600 miles through Maine's Second Congressional District while campaigning for a seat in the House of Representatives; he was elected to Congress in that year, was re-elected in 1974, and again in 1976."
[dust jacket bio, William S. Cohen, Of Sons and Seasons (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978)]

Cohen served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and was elected to the Senate in 1978 where he served three terms (1979-1997) where he was recognized as an expert on defense and international issues, health care, and government procurement. Cohen served as Secretary of Defense from January, 1997 to January, 2001.

Cohen is now chairman and CEO of The Cohen Group, a strategic business consulting firm based in Washington, D.C. [William S. Cohen]

Cohen is the author of two collections of verse: Of Sons and Seasons (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978); A Baker's Nickel (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1986).

Elizabeth J. Coleman
Elizabeth Coleman served from 1998 to 2001 as national civil rights director at the Anti-Defamation League. From 2001 to 2005 she was Executive Director of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association, where she supervised the New York State Trial Lawyers' Institute's legal education programs. In 2006, Coleman I founded and became president of Professional Stress Management Solutions, Ltd., which teaches stress management to attorneys and other professionals. She is also president of the Beatrice R. & Joseph A. Coleman Foundation for environmental and social justice.

Coleman was a co-founder and Director of the Senior Citizens Law Project of the Atlanta Legal Aid Society, a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society; a consumer law specialist at the Georgia Legal Services Program; and a partner at the law firms of Martin, McDuffie & Coleman and Stroup & Coleman. She is co-author of Commerical and Consumer Warranties: Drafting, Performing and Litigating (Matthew Bender 1987).

Coleman's poetry has been published in The Phoenicia Times and Newstar Philippines and will appear in The Lyric.

Coleman is a graduate of Swarthmore College and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. [Born, Again: A Life Re-Examined]

Scott Conley
Scott Conley was born on the Upper West side of Manhattan and educated in the public schools of New York and Connecticut. He entered Yale University and, having enrolled in the NROTC at Yale, was sworn in as an Ensign in June, 1943. His first assignment was to a ship based in San Francisco, and he spent the next three years in the Central Pacific and Caribbean aboard PCs (anti-submarine vessels.) He then returned to Yale where he graduated from the Yale Law School from in 1948. He then went to San Francisco, where he has practiced law for sixty years, primarily in trial practice. He left the active practice of law in 1997. Searching for something to keep his mind active, he took up writing at the age of 79, and ever since has written personal essays and poetry. He has made no serious effort to publish, although some of his work has appeared in the State Bar Magazine and in various private club publications. He divides his time between San Francisco and Sonoma County.

T.J. Conley
T.J. Conley is a Minneapolis lawyer with the firm, Leonard, Street and Deinard.

Janet E. Conroy
Janet Conroy was born in Queens, New York in 1963. She currently resides part-time in both New York and Montana, while maintaining a full time position at her law firm in New York, specializing in real rroperty law. She occasionally works as an adjunct professor, teaching Critical and Analytical Thinking and Real Estate Law, at St. Joseph's College, Patchogue, New York. She received her AA in 1983, BA in 1986, and her JD in 1990.

Conroy's work has been published in  The Village Times, The Pathfinder, and other periodicals. She tells us that she plans to give up the active practice of law and concentrate on writing full time when she and her family permanently move to Montana in late 2005.

Conroy has received numerous awards for her Pro Bono legal work, her volunteer work with EEDA, an organization assisting autistic and developmentally disabled children and adults, her Sponsorship of North Shore Little League, acting as volunteer Judge in Local High School Moot Court Competitions,  her assistance to Habitat for Humanity, and assorted other various charitable and community endeavors. [Personal communication with Janet Conroy, January 26, 2005 and previously]

George Constable
George Constable a Maryland attorney, is now a theologian and poet.

Miles Coon
MIles Coon graduated from Harvard Law School in 1962. He served as a trial attorney for several years at the SEC and then as a partner in his own firm with three other SEC colleagues. Coon then left law practice, worked in a family business for thirty years, and in 1999 entered Sarah Lawrence's MFA program in Poetry Writing under the mentorship of Thomas Lux. He graduated from the MFA program in 2003. Coon's poetry appears in Key West: A Collection. ["A Thank-You For Patty Gordon"] ["To Mimi"]

Cynthia Cooper
Cynthia Cooper is a Miami lawyer and poet.

James A. Costello
[James A. Costello]

Stephen W. Cogar
Stephen Cogar is a native of Arthurdale, West Virginia He graduated from Fairmont State College and obtained his law degree from West Virginia University. Cogar spent 25 years with the West Virginia State Police, including duty on the governor's executive protection. [Source: Dominion Post (Morgantown, West Virginia), Jan. 21, 2002, p, 9-A, c. 3]

Dax S. Cowart
Dax Cowart's poem, "A Dance of Life," appears in 14 (3) Corpus Christi Lawyer (1999). Cowart was born in 1947 and received his undergraduate degree from the University of Texas-Austin. He received his J.D. degree from Texas Tech University and was admitted to practice in 1986. He is with the firm Hilliard & Muñoz in Corpus Christi, Texas.

George R. Craig
George R. Craig is Pittsburgh lawyer. He published a collection of verse titled, Irreverent Verse (plus some irrelevant as well)(Pittsburgh: Law Club of Pittsburgh,1990)

Vicki Craig
[Vickie Craig]

Richard Craswell
Richard Craswell is a Professor of Law, at the University of Southern California Center. His poems, "Ballad of Regulatory Reform" and "On the Importance of Lawyers" appear in Green Bag 2d; "On Publishing Comic Verse in Law Reviews (A Manual of Style)" appears in the Journal of Legal Education.

Stan Crawford
Stan Crawford is a Houston attorney who focuses on civil trial work. He graduated from Brown University in 1973 and received his J.D. from the University of Texas in 1976. His poetry has appeared in Poet Lore, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review and Comstock Review, among other journals. Crawford's poetry is featured in Carolyn Tourney Florek (ed.), Five Inprint Poets (Mutabilis Press, 2003).

Natty Chris
Natty Chris attended Drew University (1983-1987); he obtained his J.D. from New York University in 1990. [blog]

Kelly Charles Crabb
An attorney who refers to himself as a "cowboy poet."

John O. Craig, III
Judge Craig was born in 1955 in High, Point North Carolina. He graduated from Davidson College in 1978 and received his law degree from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 1982. He was appointed resident judge of the Nort Carolina Superior Court in 2002 and was elected for an eight-year term that same year. [Judge John O. Craig, III]

A. Jay Cristol
Jay Cristol is a U.S. bankruptcy judge, poet, author, and pilot. Cristol attened the University of Miami, became a Navy pilot (serving on the U.S.S. Princeton flying anti-submarine patrols off the coast of Korea), and then returned to the University of Miami for his law degree. He worked briefly with Eastern Airlines, and joined the Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps as a reservist. He was appointed a U.S. bankruptcy judge in 1984. [Source: James H. Burnett III, "Renaisance Man: Judge, Poet, Author, Pilot—Jay Cristol has led a full life, The Miami Herald, November 13, 2006]

John Crouch
John Crouch is an Arlington, Virginia divorce lawyer.

David Crump
David Crump is a law professor at the University of Houston. He is also a novelist and author of A Miltonic Sonnet about Being Given The Game Ball after a Play in Right Field ... and 51 other Modern Poems in Sonnet Form (Strictly Books, Inc., 2001).

Gregory Curtis
Gregory Curtis is a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, lawyer. [Source: Donald Milled, Public Art Commissions Need Local Flavor, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 2, 1994]

Tamir Damari
Tamir Damari was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, and raised in Brooklyn, New York.  He received a B.A. in Philosophy from the State University of New York in 1992 and received his law degree George Washington University in 1995.  He practices commercial litigation in Washington, DC with Stanley H. Goldschmidt. He was admitted to practice in 1995. [Source: Personal communication with Tamir Damari, April 28, 2005]

George H. Daranyi
George H. Daranyi was born in Lima, Peru in 1957. He became an attorney in 1983 and is in private practice in Tucson, Arizona.

Nat David
Nat David (the poetry pen name for Evanston/Chicago, Illinois attorney, N. David Kornfeld) was born, August 12, 1956 in Chicago. He grew up in Chicago and Evanston, Illinois and now resides in Deerfield. He attended the University of Illinois-Champain-Urbana and graduated from Boston University School of Law in 1981. He started his own law practice in Evanston in 1983 and now specializes in Social Security disability law. Heartdance, a collection of poetry, which won the Carl Sandburg Award for poetry was self-published in 1989. In 1990 David founded and edited Hammers ("an end of millennium irregular poetry magazine") which ceased publication in 1997. [Personal communication with Nat David]

Mike Davidson
Mike Davidson lives in Chicago, where he serves as a public defender. His writing includes short stories and poems. He was featured in the Emerging Artists Project and "Memoirs" at the Cafe Voltaire in Chicago, and was a winner of an Illinois Arts Council award.

Michael Davis
Michael Davis graduated from Haverford College in 1974. He is the author of a novel, In the Evenings Dark Edges, and a collection of poetry, Shots of Shady Faces. He resides, so far as we know, in Eugene, Oregon.

Olena Kalytiak Davis
Olena Kalytiak Davis, a first-generation Ukrainian-American, was born on September 16, 1963. She grew up in Detroit and has since lived in San Francisco, Prague, Lviv, Paris, Chicago, and the isolated Yup'ik community of Bethel, Alaska.

Davis studied at Wayne State University, University of Michigan Law School, and Vermont College. Her poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry 1995, New England Review, Poetry Northwest, Michigan Quarterly Review, Field, Indiana Review, and has been anthologized in The New Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry (Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and Middlebury College Press, 1999), American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2000), and The Pushcart Prize 2001 XXV: Best of the Small Presses (Pushcart Press, 2001). Davis's "Prose of the World Order" appears in Lyn Hejinian & David Lehman (eds.), The Best American Poetry, 2004 (Scribner Poetry, 2004).

Davis's first collection of poetry, And Her Soul Out Of Nothing, was published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 1997. In 2003, St. Martin's Press published her latest collection, Shattered Sonnets Love Cards and Other Off and Back Handed Importunities. ["The Unbosoming"] ["A Small Number"] [Interview] [Dispatchs :: Journal]

Kate Nace Day
Kate Nace Day is a professor of law, at Suffolk University. Day is the author of short fiction, as well as poetry. Her poem, "An Elegy: Death of Blue Waters," appears in 8 N.Y. City U. L. Rev. 447 (2005)(a symposium issue in honor of the work of Ruthann Robson). [Legal Studies Forum, vol. 31, pp. 449-450 (2007): "An Elegy: Death of Blue Waters"]

F. Robert L. Dean
[source: Washington Post, Dec. 31, 1998)]

Jeffery Deaver
Jeffery Deaver is known for his suspense novels and has been a full-time author for ten years. He is a reformed poet, a former folksinger, songwriter, and music research.

Deaver was born in Chicago. He received a journalism degree from the University of Missouri and set out to be a poet and songwriter. He then obtained his law degree from Fordham University and practiced law on Wall Street for eight years during the 1980s. His novels have been frequently nominated for Edgar Awards by the Mystery Writers of America and he has received two Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine's Awards for Best Short Story of the Year. Deaver lives in Virginia. [See: Mike Ashley, The Mammouth Encyclopedia of Modern Crime Fiction (Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2002)]

Orlando E. Delogu
Orlando Delogu, Professor of Law, University of Maine is a civil leader who has served on various boards, councils and commissions. He is the author of law review articles, legal treatises, and a book of poetry, Ruminations (Press-22, 1986). [My thanks to Professor Matthew Anderson who alerted me to the fact that Professor Delogu was a poet.] [Poems—Legal Studies Forum (2006)]

Lisa J. Demsky
Lisa Demsky's poem, "Judge," appears in the Michigan Journal of Gender & Law (Vol. 5: 525, 1999). She obtained her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1996, clerked for the Honorable Cynthia H. Hall, 9th Cir., 1996-1997, and then joined Munger, Tolles, & Olson in litigation practice in Los Angeles. From 1997 to 1998, she was a visiting lecturer in law at the University of Chicago Law School. [Firm bio/profile]

John Dennison
John Dennison studied at the University of Salzburg in Salzburg, Austria and obtained his undergraduate degree from Bowling Green State University. He graduated from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in 1977. Dennison began his legal career in Ohio as a trial lawyer; his practice is now limited to business, technology, and estate planning. He is a published poet and author. [Dennison & Dennison]

Dania Deschamps
Dania Deschamps is a litigation attorney, poet and world traveler. She was born in Key West, but now resides in Ada, Oklahoma. [Dania Deschamps]

Christine DeSimone
Christine DeSimone was born in Los Angeles in 1977. She received her J.D. degree from the University of California, Hastings College of Law in 2001. She has been a poet and artist since 1993 and is currently in private practice outside of San Francisco. [Poems]

Sherri Dewitt
Sherri Dewitt is the author of Ups and Downs, A Book of Nonlinear Poetry.

Michael Diamond
Michael Diamond is an environmental lawyer. He is the author of If You Can Keep It: A Constitutional Roadmap to Environmental Security (Brass Ring Press, 1996).

Peter Dizozza
Peter Dizozza provided the following biographical sketch: "I'm a lawyer specializing in litigation and negotiation in the personal injury field. I consider myself a poet the way Cocteau did. I am also New York City Liaison for the anti-folk community which means I get them permits and permission to do things like have park concerts and parades. I'm part of that east village scene in that I live there, enjoy the performers and play a monthly piano set as part of these antifolk festivals, one of which is currently underway. I graduated from St. John's Law in 1986. I was born in