The courtroom smelled the way all family courtrooms smell—like recycled air and quiet desperation, like wood polish and the particular anxiety that radiates from people whose most private failures are about to be discussed under fluorescent lights by strangers in suits. I had spent fifteen years in rooms like this one, though usually from the other side of the bench, and I knew their rhythms the way a musician knows the architecture of a concert hall—the way sound travels across polished surfaces, the way silence accumulates in corners, the way a single sentence spoken at the right volume can change the temperature of an entire proceeding.
Today, I was not behind the bench. I was seated at the respondent’s table in a navy blazer and white blouse, my brown hair pulled back in the same understated style I’d worn since my first day in chambers, my hands folded in front of me on a legal pad I had not yet written on. The pale band on my left ring finger—the ghost of a wedding ring I had removed six months earlier after a marriage that had ended not with an explosion but with the slow, exhaustive recognition that the man I’d married had never bothered to learn who I was—caught the courtroom light and glowed faintly, like a scar that hadn’t decided whether to fade or stay.
Across the aisle, my ex-husband Derek sat with the relaxed posture of a man who believed the outcome of this hearing had been determined before it began. He wore a charcoal suit that cost more than my first month’s rent after law school, and beside him sat his attorney, Ryan Crawford, a man whose reputation for aggressive family litigation was exceeded only by his reputation for billing aggressively for it. They had the look of a team that had rehearsed—notes aligned, expressions calibrated, the quiet confidence of people who had loaded their weapon and were waiting for the appropriate moment to fire it.
The weapon was my mother.
I didn’t know this yet. Not with certainty. I had suspected it for weeks—the strange silence from my family since Derek filed for full custody, the way my sister Megan had stopped returning my calls, the way my mother’s texts had shifted from their usual mix of unsolicited advice and passive commentary to a conspicuous absence that felt less like distance and more like preparation. But suspicion is not knowledge, and I had spent my career teaching myself to wait for evidence before drawing conclusions.
The evidence arrived at two thirty-seven in the afternoon, when the courtroom doors opened and my mother walked in.
Patricia Whitfield was sixty-seven years old and carried herself with the upright, deliberate posture of a woman who believed that appearance was not vanity but communication—a message sent to the world about how seriously you expected to be taken. Her silver-blonde hair was styled with the architectural precision she applied to everything in her life, and she wore a cream blazer over a dark dress that said: I am here in an official capacity. She did not look at me as she walked past the respondent’s table. She looked straight ahead, at the witness stand, with the focused expression of someone who had been rehearsing this moment and was ready to perform.
“Your Honor,” Crawford said, standing with the fluid confidence of a man about to play his strongest card, “the petitioner calls Patricia Whitfield to the stand.”
My mother was sworn in. She stated her name. She confirmed her relationship to me and to my eight-year-old son Owen, who sat in the front row of the gallery beside my sister Megan, his dark eyes wide with the particular confusion of a child who understands that something important is happening but does not yet have the vocabulary to name it.
“Mrs. Whitfield,” Crawford began, “can you describe your daughter’s current living situation?”
My mother settled into the witness chair with the composed authority of a woman who had been given permission to say everything she had been thinking for years.
“Lauren lives in a small apartment downtown,” she said. “She drives an old car. She can barely afford Owen’s school supplies. Meanwhile, Derek has a beautiful home in the suburbs, a stable income, and the kind of environment every child deserves.”
Crawford nodded encouragingly. “And can you speak to your daughter’s employment history?”
This was the moment my mother had been building toward. I could see it in the way she straightened, the way her chin lifted, the way her voice found the particular register she used when she believed she was stating something inarguable.
“Your Honor,” she said, turning to address Judge Elaine Morrison directly, “my daughter has always been unstable. She can barely hold down a job. She’s been in and out of therapy. She disappears for days at a time, claims she’s working, but I’ve never seen evidence of any steady employment. She’s secretive about her so-called career. For all we know, she could be involved in something that would put my grandson in danger.”
The courtroom murmured. Derek’s family, who filled the left side of the gallery with the coordinated solidarity of people who had been briefed on the narrative and were present to reinforce it, nodded along as if my mother were reading from a document they had all co-signed. My side of the gallery was nearly empty—just three friends who had taken time off work to be there, people who actually knew what I did for a living, sitting in quiet, coiled tension, waiting for me to do what they knew I was capable of doing.
“Furthermore,” my mother continued, reaching her crescendo with the confidence of someone who has mistaken volume for truth, “Lauren has never demonstrated the kind of stability a child needs. She’s always been vague about her work, always making excuses about why she can’t attend family events, always disappearing into her study with papers and files as if she’s trying to look important. My grandson deserves a real home. He deserves his father.”
She folded her hands in her lap with the satisfied precision of a woman who has delivered her testimony and believes she has done something righteous.
I sat at the respondent’s table and felt the words land the way words do when they come from the person who raised you—not against your skin but underneath it, bypassing the defenses you’ve built for strangers and finding the older, softer places that never fully callous over, no matter how many years you spend behind a bench making decisions that affect thousands of lives. She can barely hold down a job. The phrase echoed in my chest like something dropped from a height.
Fifteen years. Fifteen years of judicial service, of writing decisions that were taught in law schools, of presiding over cases that shaped family law across the state, of chairing the ethics committee, of sitting on appellate panels for death penalty cases where the weight of a single ruling could mean the difference between life and death—and my mother had just told a courtroom full of people that I couldn’t hold a job.
Crawford stood to address the bench. “Your Honor, we believe the testimony clearly demonstrates that the child’s best interests would be served by awarding full custody to the petitioner. The mother’s inability to provide stability, combined with her secretive behavior regarding her employment, raises serious concerns about her fitness as a parent.”
Judge Morrison’s expression remained neutral. I had known Elaine Morrison for over a decade—we had served on the same judicial conference panels, attended the same continuing education seminars, exchanged the professional courtesies that colleagues in the judiciary extend to one another with the understanding that their paths will cross repeatedly and mutual respect is not optional. She gave no sign of recognition now. She was doing what I would have done in her position: listening, assessing, maintaining the impartial demeanor that the bench requires regardless of what you personally know about the people standing in your courtroom.
“Ms. Hayes,” Judge Morrison said, looking at me. “How do you respond to these allegations about your employment and your ability to provide for your son?”
I stood slowly. Fifteen years of judicial experience had taught me many things, but the most important was the value of timing—of letting other people reveal the full architecture of their deception before showing your hand. My mother had revealed hers. Derek had revealed his. Crawford had revealed his. They had built their case on a foundation of assumptions so comprehensive and so wrong that the structure was already unstable. All it needed was a single, well-placed piece of truth, and the entire thing would collapse.
“Your Honor,” I said, my voice carrying the calm, practiced projection that I used in my own courtroom when I needed every person in the room to hear not just my words but the authority behind them, “I’d like to call a witness to address those concerns.”
Crawford looked confused. “Your Honor, we weren’t notified of any additional witnesses.”
“The witness wasn’t available until this morning,” I replied. “But I believe his testimony will clarify the questions raised about my employment.”
Judge Morrison studied me for a moment with the evaluative gaze of a jurist who senses that the proceeding is about to change direction in a way that no one in the room has anticipated. “Very well,” she said. “Call your witness.”
I walked to the courtroom doors and opened them.
The man who entered carried himself with the particular authority that accumulates over three decades of service at the highest level of the state judiciary. He was tall, silver-haired, wearing an impeccable dark suit that communicated not wealth but gravity—the gravity of a person whose daily decisions shape the legal framework under which millions of people live. He walked to the witness stand with the unhurried confidence of someone who has testified in more courtrooms than most attorneys will ever enter, and when he was sworn in, he stated his name with the simplicity of a man who knows it needs no introduction.
“Thomas Barrett. Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court.”
The gasp that moved through the courtroom was not subtle. It was the collective, involuntary exhale of thirty people simultaneously realizing that the story they had been told was not the story they were in. My mother’s face cycled through emotions with the speed of a slot machine—confidence to confusion to the dawning, sickening recognition that something had gone catastrophically wrong. Derek’s posture collapsed by degrees, his relaxed confidence draining visibly, like air leaving a tire. Crawford began shuffling through his papers with the frantic energy of an attorney who has just discovered that the case he prepared for bears no resemblance to the case he is in.
“Chief Justice Barrett,” I said, standing before the witness stand with the professional tone I had used every day for fifteen years, “could you please identify me for the court?”
He looked at me with an expression that was formal but carried, beneath its formality, the warmth of a colleague who had watched me develop from a young attorney into one of the finest legal minds he had encountered in his career.
“You are the Honorable Lauren Hayes,” he said. “Associate Justice of the State Supreme Court, where you have served with distinction for the past eight years.”
The silence that followed was so complete that I could hear the ventilation system humming in the ceiling, could hear the faint creak of a gallery bench as someone shifted their weight, could hear my mother’s sharp, involuntary intake of breath—the sound of a woman whose entire testimony had just been vaporized by a single sentence spoken by the highest-ranking judge in the state.
“And could you describe the nature of my professional responsibilities?” I asked.
“Justice Hayes presides over some of our most complex civil and criminal cases,” Barrett said, his voice carrying the steady, authoritative cadence of a man who understands that every word he speaks in a courtroom is a matter of record. “She sits on our appellate panel for death penalty cases. She chairs the judicial ethics committee. She has authored several landmark decisions in family law and child welfare that have been recognized nationally and are now standard teaching material in law schools across the country.”
I let the words settle. I let the courtroom absorb them. I let my mother, who had not moved since Barrett identified me, sit in the witness chair she had so confidently occupied five minutes earlier and feel the full weight of what she had done—not just the legal weight, which was considerable, but the personal weight, which was devastating. She had testified under oath that her daughter couldn’t hold a job. Her daughter was a sitting justice of the State Supreme Court.
“One more question, Chief Justice,” I said. “Could you address the allegations regarding my financial stability?”
Barrett allowed himself a slight smile—the kind of smile that a man permits himself when he is about to deliver information that renders an entire line of attack absurd.
“Justice Hayes earns an annual salary of one hundred and ninety-five thousand dollars, plus full benefits. She owns her downtown residence—a penthouse apartment, to be specific—outright. She maintains a second property in the mountains. Her financial disclosure forms, which are required of all sitting judges and are part of the public record, reflect a level of financial stability that is well above average.”
I thanked the Chief Justice and turned to face the courtroom. My mother sat in the gallery where she had retreated after her testimony, her face drained of color, her carefully constructed narrative lying in ruins around her like a building that had looked solid from the outside but had been built on nothing. Derek stared at the table in front of him with the fixed, unseeing gaze of a man whose brain was still attempting to process the fact that he had been married to a state supreme court justice for six years and had believed she was a courthouse clerk. Crawford had stopped shuffling his papers and was sitting very still, the stillness of an attorney calculating the professional consequences of having built a custody case on testimony that was not merely inaccurate but spectacularly, publicly, verifiably wrong.
Owen sat in the front row, his dark eyes wide, looking at me with an expression I had never seen on his face before—a mixture of confusion and pride and the dawning, electric understanding of a child who has just discovered that his mother, the woman who packed his lunches and helped with his homework and drove a sensible car and lived in an apartment he thought was small, was someone the world took very seriously.
“Your Honor,” I said, addressing Judge Morrison, “I’d like to explain to the court why my family was unaware of my position.”
Morrison nodded.
“Eight years ago, when I was confirmed to the State Supreme Court, I made a deliberate decision to keep my professional life separate from my personal relationships. This was not because I was ashamed of my work. It was because I wanted my son to have a normal childhood—to attend a regular school, to make friends based on who he was rather than who his mother was, to grow up without the pressure and scrutiny that comes with being a judge’s child in a state where judicial decisions are frequently front-page news.”
I paused, choosing my next words with the care I applied to every opinion I wrote.
“I chose to live modestly. To drive a practical car. To shop at regular stores. I wanted Owen to learn the value of hard work and humility, to understand that a person’s worth is not measured by the visible markers of their success but by their character, their integrity, and the way they treat the people around them.”
I looked at Derek. He couldn’t meet my eyes.
“During our marriage,” I said, “my ex-husband knew I worked at the courthouse. He assumed I was a clerk. He never asked for details. He never wondered why I worked such long hours, why I brought home complex legal briefs, why I sometimes had to travel for judicial conferences. He never asked because he had already decided that my work was unimportant, and unimportant things don’t require investigation.”
The sentence hung in the courtroom like a verdict of its own.
“The reason I am sometimes unavailable for extended periods,” I continued, “is because I am presiding over cases that can last weeks or months. The reason I couldn’t always attend school events is because I was writing legal decisions that affect thousands of families across this state. The reason I’ve been, as my mother described it, ‘secretive’ about my work is because I was protecting my son from the complications that come with public judicial service—and because no one in my family ever demonstrated enough genuine interest in my life to warrant the conversation.”
Barrett spoke from the gallery where he had taken a seat after stepping down from the stand. “If I may, Your Honor—Justice Hayes has one of the finest legal minds I’ve encountered in thirty years on the bench. Her decisions have been upheld by federal courts on appeal. She was confirmed at thirty-one, making her one of the youngest justices in the history of this state. Her work in family law, specifically, has directly improved the lives of thousands of children whose welfare was at stake in proceedings not unlike this one.”
I walked back to the respondent’s table and stood behind my chair, but I was no longer a respondent. I was what I had always been—a sitting judge with fifteen years of legal experience, a reputation for fairness that was documented in hundreds of published decisions, and a son who was watching me from the front row with the expression of a child who has just learned that the quiet, modest woman who read him bedtime stories was also the person whose name appeared at the top of legal opinions that shaped the laws of an entire state.
“Your Honor,” I said, “I have spent my career protecting children and families. I have written decisions that removed children from abusive homes. I have ensured fair custody arrangements in cases where the power imbalance between parties was extreme. I have put child welfare above every other consideration, in every case, without exception. The allegation that I am somehow unfit to care for my own son is not only false—it is an insult to every family I have protected and every child whose interests I have safeguarded from the bench.”
I turned to look at my mother. She sat in the gallery with her hands clasped in her lap, her composure gone, her face carrying the expression of a woman who has just watched the ground open beneath a structure she believed was solid and has no idea how to stand on what remains.
“What is particularly painful,” I said, and my voice did not waver, though the emotion beneath it pressed against my sternum like a hand, “is that these allegations come from people who never asked about my work. Who never showed genuine interest in my career. Who assumed that because I didn’t advertise my accomplishments, I didn’t have any. Who decided that because I chose humility over display, I must be hiding failure rather than protecting something I valued.”
I paused. “I’d like to submit my judicial performance evaluations, my financial disclosure forms, and my custody evaluation report prepared by Dr. Rachel Williams, a court-appointed child psychologist.”
Judge Morrison reviewed the documents with the thoroughness of a jurist who understands that the record she creates today will be scrutinized. “Dr. Williams rated you as an exemplary parent,” she said, reading from the evaluation, “with strong bonds to your child, consistent and reliable caregiving, and no concerns regarding your ability to provide a nurturing and stable environment.”
I took a breath. “Your Honor, I am requesting full physical custody of my son, with supervised visitation for the father pending his completion of court-ordered co-parenting classes. I am also requesting that all future custody proceedings be conducted without the involvement of extended family members who have demonstrated a willingness to provide testimony that is not merely inaccurate but reckless in its disregard for the truth.”
Morrison’s expression had shifted over the course of the hearing from the practiced neutrality of a judge listening to routine testimony to something harder, something that carried the particular weight of a jurist who has witnessed the legal system being used as a weapon against someone she knows to be one of its most dedicated servants.
“Given the evidence presented,” Morrison said, “and the deeply concerning nature of the testimony provided by the petitioner’s witness, this court is granting full physical custody to Justice Hayes. Visitation for the father will be supervised for the next six months, subject to revision upon successful completion of court-ordered parenting classes. Additionally, this court notes for the record that the testimony of Patricia Whitfield contained multiple statements that were materially false and potentially prejudicial, and this court reserves the right to refer the matter for further review.”
The gavel came down with a sound that I had heard ten thousand times from the other side of the bench but had never heard from this side—not as a judge closing a case but as a mother whose right to raise her own child had been affirmed against an attack orchestrated by the people who should have known her best and didn’t.
Owen reached me before anyone else. He crossed the gallery in four steps and wrapped his arms around my waist with the fierce, uncomplicated grip of a child who understands that the person holding him is the safest place in the world.
“Mom,” he whispered, his face pressed against my blazer. “Why didn’t you tell me you were a judge?”
I knelt down to his level, my hands on his shoulders, looking into the dark eyes that were the best thing I had ever contributed to the world, better than any decision I had written, more important than any case I had decided.
“Because I wanted you to love me for being your mom,” I said. “Not because of my job.”
He thought about this with the serious concentration of an eight-year-old processing new information. “I think it’s really cool,” he said. Then, with the irrepressible curiosity of his age: “Does this mean you can send people to jail?”
“Sometimes,” I said. “But mostly I help families figure out how to take care of each other.”
He nodded, satisfied with this answer, and slipped his hand into mine.
My mother approached as the courtroom emptied. She moved tentatively, the architectural confidence of her posture gone, replaced by the uncertain gait of a person who has arrived at a doorway they are no longer sure they have permission to walk through.
“Lauren,” she said. “I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”
I stood with Owen’s hand in mine and looked at the woman who had raised me, who had taught me to iron my clothes and speak clearly and never leave the house without looking presentable, who had given me a childhood that was organized and adequate and curiously devoid of the one thing I had spent my entire career trying to provide for other people’s children: the feeling of being seen.
“You testified under oath,” I said, “that I was an unfit parent. You did it without knowing anything about my life, my career, or my capabilities. You were willing to help take my son away from me based on assumptions you never bothered to verify and prejudices you never bothered to examine.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Derek told me things. He said you were struggling, that Owen needed—”
“Derek told you what he needed you to believe,” I said. “And you believed him. Over your own daughter. Without asking me a single question.”
She opened her mouth, and I watched her search for the words that would make this something other than what it was—a betrayal so fundamental that no apology, however sincere, could repair the thing it had broken. She didn’t find them.
“For fifteen years,” I said, “you’ve asked me what I do for work, and I’ve given you vague answers. That’s true. But you never pressed. You never showed real curiosity. You assumed that because I didn’t brag, I didn’t have anything to brag about. You decided that because I chose a quiet life, I must be living a small one.”
My sister Megan sat in the front row, crying silently, and I looked at her too—at the woman who had known what was planned and had said nothing, who had sat beside Owen while their mother testified against me and had not stood up, had not objected, had not even met my eyes.
“I became a justice at thirty-one,” I said, not with pride but with the flat, factual tone of a woman stating what should have been obvious to the people who claimed to love her. “One of the youngest in the history of this state. I’ve written decisions that are taught in law schools. I’ve protected thousands of children. I’ve dedicated my life to fairness and justice and the principle that every person who stands before a court deserves to be seen for who they actually are, not who someone else has decided they must be.”
I paused. “I spent my career giving that to strangers. I couldn’t even get it from my own family.”
Chief Justice Barrett approached as the courtroom cleared, his bearing respectful, his expression carrying the warmth of a colleague who had just watched someone he admired navigate something painful with the same composure and precision she brought to the bench.
“Lauren,” he said, “I hope this doesn’t discourage you from continuing your work.”
“If anything,” I said, “it’s reminded me why the work matters.”
We walked out of the courthouse together, Owen and I, into the late afternoon light that fell across the stone steps and the parking lot and the ordinary world that existed outside the doors of the building where my life had just been publicly, irrevocably rearranged. Owen held my hand and looked up at the courthouse facade with the wondering expression of a child seeing a familiar place for the first time.
“Is this where you work?” he asked.
“A building like this one,” I said. “A few blocks away.”
“Can I visit?”
“Someday. When there’s a case you’d find interesting.”
He grinned. “I think all of them would be interesting.”
Six months later, Derek completed his parenting classes and was granted unsupervised visitation. He was a different man in the aftermath—quieter, more careful, stripped of the casual arrogance that comes from never being contradicted. He never questioned my ability to provide for Owen again. He never remarried. When he dropped Owen off on Sunday evenings, he sometimes stood at the door of my apartment—the penthouse he had never known was a penthouse, in the building he had never bothered to look up at closely enough to notice the doorman and the marble lobby and the elevator that required a key—and said, simply, “He had a good weekend,” and I would nod, and that was the extent of our communication, and it was enough.
My mother wrote me a letter. It arrived three months after the hearing, six pages of careful handwriting on cream stationery, full of explanations and apologies and the particular language of a woman who has finally realized that the story she told herself about her daughter was not merely incomplete but wrong in ways that implicated her own character more than mine. She described her regret. She described her shame. She described the moment in the courtroom when Barrett said my name and title and the ground beneath her dissolved.
I read it once. I folded it. I put it in a drawer. I did not respond.
Some betrayals reveal too much about the person who committed them to be repaired by the person who survived them. My mother had walked into a courtroom and told a judge that I was unfit to raise my own child. She had done it without evidence, without curiosity, without the basic decency of asking me a single question before agreeing to help a man take my son away. The apology was, I believed, genuine. But the act it apologized for had shown me something about the way she saw me that no amount of regret could un-show, and I had spent my career learning that some truths, once revealed, cannot be folded back into the shapes they came from.
Megan reached out too, tentatively, through texts that arrived with increasing frequency—photos of her children, links to articles she thought I’d like, invitations to dinners I politely declined. I didn’t hate her. I didn’t hate either of them. What I felt was something more permanent than anger and less dramatic than estrangement: a clarity about the limits of what these relationships could provide, and a refusal to pretend those limits didn’t exist.
Owen grew. He told his friends his mother was a judge, and he said it with a pride that had nothing to do with status and everything to do with the particular satisfaction of a child who has discovered that the person he loves most is also someone the world respects. He asked me questions about my work—real questions, the kind that required real answers—and I gave them to him, because he had earned the truth and because hiding it had never been about protecting him from my career. It had been about protecting him from the distortions that power and visibility create in the people around you, and the hearing had taught me that those distortions existed whether people knew about my position or not.
I stopped hiding. Not dramatically—I didn’t give interviews or post on social media or make announcements at family gatherings. I simply stopped deflecting when people asked what I did. I said, “I’m a judge,” and let the sentence stand without qualification or apology. I let Owen attend a judicial conference with me and watched his face as he realized that the building was full of people who called his mother “Justice Hayes” and treated her with the deference reserved for someone whose decisions shaped their professional lives. He was quiet on the drive home, processing, and then he said, “Mom, you’re kind of a big deal,” and I laughed and said, “Don’t let it go to your head,” and he said, “Too late,” and we drove the rest of the way home listening to the radio with the windows cracked, the ordinary evening air filling the car with the smell of cut grass and cooling asphalt and the unremarkable, irreplaceable beauty of a Tuesday in a life that belonged to us.
A year after the hearing, I was writing an opinion in my chambers—a custody case, as it happened, involving a mother whose fitness was being questioned by a father with more resources and louder advocates—when I paused with my pen above the page and thought about that afternoon in the courtroom. Not the dramatic parts—not Barrett’s testimony or my mother’s face or the sound of the gavel. The part I thought about was Owen, running across the gallery to wrap his arms around me. The part where he asked why I hadn’t told him, and I said I wanted him to love me for being his mom.
He had looked at me with those dark, serious eyes and said, “I think it’s cool.”
Not: I think it changes everything. Not: I think you’re different now. Just: I think it’s cool. As in: this is one more thing about you, added to the pile of things I already knew, and the pile was already enough.
That was the answer I had been afraid to hear and the answer I needed most. That the people who love you properly don’t love you because of your title or your salary or the size of your apartment. They love you because you pack their lunch and help with their homework and sit on the floor building Legos on a Thursday night when you could be reviewing briefs but you choose, deliberately and repeatedly, to be present instead.
Everything else—the bench, the decisions, the reputation, the respect of colleagues and the recognition of a profession—was important. It was the work of my life, and I was proud of it with a pride that no longer needed to hide.
But it wasn’t the thing that mattered most.
The thing that mattered most was a boy holding my hand on the courthouse steps, looking up at me with an expression that said: You’re my mom. You’re also a judge. Both of those things are cool. But the first one came first, and it always will.
Justice, I had learned, is not only something you serve from a bench in a black robe with a gavel in your hand.
Sometimes it is something you claim for yourself, quietly, in a courtroom where the people who should have known you best are finally forced to see what was there all along.
And sometimes—most importantly—it is something an eight-year-old boy delivers without knowing it, in four words spoken with absolute certainty in a crowded courtroom on the worst and best afternoon of your life:
I think it’s cool.
That was enough. That was everything. That was the verdict that mattered.
Adrian Hawthorne is a celebrated author and dedicated archivist who finds inspiration in the hidden stories of the past. Educated at Oxford, he now works at the National Archives, where preserving history fuels his evocative writing. Balancing archival precision with creative storytelling, Adrian founded the Hawthorne Institute of Literary Arts to mentor emerging writers and honor the timeless art of narrative.