Local Author and Former WLAC President Lise Pearlman Book Release Party

Meet Local Author and Former WLAC President Lise Pearlman, who will discuss her work and read from her newest book at Laurel Books on June 9, 2018 and 5 p.m. (see location information below)

We look forward to seeing you there!

About the Book: Call Me Phaedra: The Life and Times of Movement Lawyer Fay Stender provides an inside view of activism during the McCarthy Era, the Civil Rights Movement, Free Speech Era, the rise of black power, and the Women’s Rights Movement. It chronicles the extraordinary life and career of Fay Stender, focused particularly on her work as a rare female criminal defense lawyer and ground-breaking prisoners’ rights advocate. The book focuses on Stender’s achievements and challenges representing two black revolutionary clients. Her work both won her international acclaim as a top Movement lawyer and propelled her to a tragic end. The saga of this feminine icon will fascinate those who lived through these eras as well as young adults today interested in the history of American activism and, particularly, women who challenged white-male monopoly power. Those who are working to change American society for the better today can draw valuable lessons from this important new biography and history book which reflects years of research, including access to several unpublished private collections and scores of exclusive interviews.

About the Author:

Lise Pearlman appeared in Stanley Nelson’s acclaimed 2015 film “The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution” as the country’s leading expert on the 1968 Huey Newton death penalty trial. Her first history book, The Sky’s The Limit: People v. Newton, The Real Trial of the 20th Century? [Regent Press 2012] won awards in the categories of law, history and multiculturalism.  Pearlman was an undergraduate in the first class that included women at Yale University when Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale was tried for murder in New Haven. She then moved to the Bay Area where she attended Berkeley Law School and then clerked for California Chief Justice Donald White before practicing law in Oakland. From 1989-1995, she served as the first Presiding Judge of the California State Bar Court. Pearlman has spent almost all of her adult life in Oakland where the Newton trial took place and where she still resides. www.lisapearlman.com