Katie Rose Guest Pryal

Adjunct Professor of Law

Email
pryal@unc.edu
Curriculum Vitae Download Photo

Areas of Expertise

  • Disability Law
  • Legal Writing

Biography

Katie Rose Guest Pryal, J.D., Ph.D., joined the Carolina Law faculty in 2009 as an adjunct professor of legal writing; shortly thereafter she joined the legal writing faculty in a full-time position. She left the faculty to pursue a full-time writing career in 2014. She was delighted to rejoin the faculty as an adjunct professor in 2019 to teach upper-level writing courses.

A specialist in legal writing, she’s written many books on law and writing. With UNC Law Professor Ruth Ann McKinney, she co-authored Core Grammar for Lawyers (CAP, 5th ed. 2024). With UNC Law Professor Alexa Z. Chew, she edits The Complete Series for Legal Writers, which has three titles (and counting). For the series, Professor Chew and Dr. Pryal have co-authored The Complete Legal Writer (CAP, 2d ed. 2020) and The Complete Bar Writer (CAP, 2020). With professor Louis di Leo, Dr. Pryal wrote The Complete Pre-Law Writer (CAP 2022).

Dr. Pryal is an award-winning author of more than fifteen books of fiction and nonfiction and frequent keynote speaker specializing in mental health and disability (represented by Brightsight Speakers). On the subject of disability, she is the author of Life of the Mind Interrupted: Essays on Mental Health and Disability in Higher Education (Blue Crow, 2017), A Light in the Tower: A New Reckoning with Mental Health in Higher Education (UP Kansas, 2024), and Your Kid Belongs Here: Parenting Neurodiverse Kids (forthcoming from Johns Hopkins UP). She writes extensively for national and international publications and regularly advises organizations on mental health and disability issues.

Education

  • 1998, Duke University, AB French and English, cum laude
  • 2000, John Hopkins University Writing Seminars, MA Creative Writing
  • 2003, UNC School of Law, JD
  • 2007, UNC-Greensboro, Ph.D. Rhetoric and Composition and Certificate in Women's Studies

Selected Publications

THE COMPLETE LEGAL STYLIST (A. Chew and K. Pryal) (forthcoming 2025).

Front-Line Faculty and Systemic Burnout: Why More Faculty Should Attend to Law Students' Mental Health and the Inequities Caused by Faculty Who Opt Out, 27 LEGAL WRITING 199 (2023).
Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein

Genre Discovery 2.0., 28 BARRY L. REV. 1 (2023). 
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein

DARKNESS INTERRUPTED: MENTAL HEALTH, TEACHING, AND WRITING (forthcoming 2022).

THE COMPLETE PRE-LAW WRITER (with L. di Leo) (Carolina Acad. Press, 2022).

THE COMPLETE BAR WRITER (A. Chew and K. Pryal) (Carolina Acad. Press, 2020).
KF303 .C44 2020

EVEN IF YOU’RE BROKEN: ESSAYS ON SEXUAL ASSAULT AND #METOO (Blue Crow Books, 2019).

THE FREELANCE ACADEMIC: TRANSFORM YOUR CREATIVE LIFE AND CAREER (Blue Crow Books, 2019).

Heller’s Scapegoats, 93 N.C. L. REV. 1439 (2015).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress

The Genre Discovery Approach: Preparing Law Students to Write Any Legal Document, 59 WAYNE L. REV. 351 (2013).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein

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