Panel Guest
Linda Fairstein – lawyer, former prosecutor, and internationally best-selling crime novelist – is one of America’s foremost legal experts on crimes of violence against women and children.
For three decades, from 1972 until 2002, Fairstein served in the office of the New York County District Attorney, where she was chief of the country’s pioneering Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit for twenty-six years. She was the lead attorney in the homicide prosecution of Robert Chambers (the “Preppy Murder” case) in 1988, and directed major litigation in these specialties, including the trial against the offenders charged with the riot in Central Park following the Puerto Rican Day parade in June, 2000.
Fairstein is an honors graduate of Vassar College (1969) and the University of Virginia School of Law (1972). In 1998, Fairstein’s law school classmates established a scholarship fund in her honor at their alma mater, supporting law school students interested in pursuing careers in the public sector. She has received numerous awards for her legal work and advocacy, and in many instances, was the first woman to be so honored. These include the Federal Bar Council’s Emory Buckner Award for Public Service and Glamour Magazine’s Women of the Year Award; the American Heart Association Women of Courage award, and scores of similar honors. In 2010, Fairstein was awarded the New York Women’s Agenda Lifetime Achievement Award for her domestic violence work, and the Silver Bullet Award of the International Thriller Writers.
Ms. Fairstein is the author of an internationally best-selling series of crime novels (translated into more than a dozen languages) which feature Manhattan prosecutor Alexandra Cooper. The sixteenth in the series – TERMINAL CITY – debuted in June 2014 and was an instant New York Times bestseller, as were the dozen books which preceded it. DEVIL’S BRIDGE will be published in August, 2015.
She is also the author of a non-fiction work, SEXUAL VIOLENCE: OUR WAR AGAINST RAPE (1993), which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She is a regular contributor on criminal justice issues to magazines, journals, and on-line publications like The Daily Beast, and does on-air commentary for all the major television network and cable news shows.
