Katie Rose Guest Pryal
Adjunct Professor of Law

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, 4th ed. 2020). With UNC Law Professor Alexa Z. Chew, she edits The Complete Series for Legal Writers, which has four titles (and counting). For the series, Professor Chew and Dr. Pryal have co-authored The Complete Legal Writer (CAP, 2d ed. 2020), The Complete Bar Writer (CAP, 2020), and The Complete Legal Stylist, forthcoming in 2023.
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. 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) and Darkness Interrupted: Reckoning with Mental Health in Higher Education, forthcoming in 2023 from University Press of Kansas. She has written extensively for national and international publications, advised organizations on mental health and disability issues, and is a regular columnist for The Chronicle of Higher Education.
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 2023).
Systemic Burnout: An Examination of the Work of Front-Line Professors in Caring for Law Students’ Mental Health, in LEGAL WRITING (forthcoming 2022).
DARKNESS INTERRUPTED: MENTAL HEALTH, TEACHING, AND WRITING (forthcoming 2022).
THE COMPLETE PRE-LAW WRITER (with L. di Leo) (Carolina Acad. Press, 2022).
Genre Discovery 2.0., BARRY L. REV. (forthcoming).
THE COMPLETE BAR WRITER (A. Chew & 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
The Genre Discovery Approach: Preparing Law Students to Write Any Legal Document, 59 WAYNE L. REV. 351 (2013).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein
In the Media
- Pryal: The Holes We Live With (Full Grown People)
- Pryal: Public Writing in Uncertain Times (Chronicle of Higher Education)
- Pryal: Letting Go of Rigor Anxiety During a Pandemic (National Teaching & Learning Forum)
- Pryal: The Public Writing Life: The Venue, the Pitch, and the Fee (Chronicle of Higher Education)
- Pryal: You Want to Write for the Public, but About What? (Chronicle of Higher Education)
- Pryal: No, I Don’t Want Your Advice on How My Kids or I Can Be “Cured” (Catapult)
- Pryal: 10 Questions Every Academic Should Ask Before Writing for the Public (Chronicle of Higher Education)
- Pryal: What Do Psychiatrically Disabled Faculty Owe Our Students? (Vitae)
- Pryal: The Worst Part of the Bar Exam: It’s Time to Drop the Mental Health Questions (Slate)
- Pryal: Shattering the Madness Monolith: On the Intersections of Race, Gender, and Psychiatric Disability (Vitae)