Keen, Lisa

PERSONAL: Female.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, University of Michigan Press, 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48104-3209.

CAREER: Freelance journalist covering national politics and law in Washington, DC. Worked previously as writer and editor for the Washington Blade News and the New York Blade News.

WRITINGS:

(With Suzanne B. Goldberg) Strangers to the Law: Gay People on Trial, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1998.

Contributor to various publications, including Washington Blade News, New York Blade News, and the Washington Post.

SIDELIGHTS: Lisa Keen is a freelance journalist who writes about politics and law in Washington, D.C., particularly as to how they relate to gay rights. She has served as an editor for both the New York Blade and the Washington Blade, newspapers that are geared to the interests and concerns of the homosexual population. Her book Strangers to the Law: Gay People on Trial focuses on a landmark state supreme court decision handed down in Colorado in 1992 that prevented the state or local government from enacting any laws to protect anyone of homosexual orientation from discrimination. As some viewed the ruling, the decision effectively stripped a portion of the population of their civil rights, declaring them less than citizens. Keen and coauthor Suzanne B. Goldberg chronicle the background leading up to the decision, as well as strategy, the actual court proceedings, and how the case affected the parties involved.

Susan R. Green, reviewing Strangers to the Law for Trial, called the book "effective and detailed," but thought that "the authors waste an opportunity to combine their powerful legal arguments with the strongly personal nature of the case. By failing to adequately develop characters in the book, they miss the chance to express in human terms the consequences of constitutionally protected intolerance." Library Journal critic James E. Van Buskirk remarked that the authors "clearly and carefully chronicle" the events of the case.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Law and Social Inquiry, spring, 1999, review of Strangers to the Law: Gay People on Trial, p. 576.

Trial, March, 1999, Susan R. Green, review of Strangers to the Law, p. 94.

Voice Literary Supplement, June, 1998, review of Strangers to the Law, p. 76.

Washingtonian, March, 1998, Diana McLellan, "Out in Front: Gay and Lesbian Rights Activist Lisa Keen," pp. 31-35.

ONLINE

Washington Post Online, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ (December 8, 2004), "Lisa Keen."