New Readers: Start Here!

Welcome to Writing All the Way to the End.

For many years I listened to other people’s stories in courtrooms. As a judge, my role was to hear testimony, weigh evidence, and render decisions that could shape the course of people’s lives. Long before that, I was part of the feminist movement of the 1970s, helped found the newspaper Big Mama Rag, worked on domestic violence reform, and navigated the complicated intersections of law, family, and public life.

Eventually I found myself asking a different question: how do we make sense of our own lives?

This newsletter grew out of that question.

Here I write about memoir, justice, activism, and the experiences that shape a life over time. Some posts explore the craft of memoir writing and the challenges of telling the truth about a life. Others reflect on what I saw from the bench, the social movements that shaped my early years, and the moral questions that arise when law, family, and identity intersect.

Readers will find writing here about:

• memoir and the process of shaping memory into story

• lessons and reflections from my years as a judge

• essays on feminism, racism, and social justice

• the personal experiences that shaped both my public and private life

These themes also shape my forthcoming memoir, Your Verdict: A Judge’s Reckoning with Law and Loss, which reflects on both the pain of fractured family relationships and on the complicated connections between justice, judgment, and the stories we tell about ourselves.

If you’re new here, you might enjoy starting with a few pieces that reflect the range of what I write about.

• It’s Not Too Late Now—and It Never Was

• Who Are You Writing This Memoir for, Really?

• He Said She Said: Writing Dialogue in Memoir

Thank you for reading, and welcome. Please subscribe. It’s free and always will be.