Jacqueline St. Joan is a retired lawyer and Denver County Judge (1987-1994), fiction writer, poet, and essayist whose memoir, “Your Verdict: A Judge’s Reckoning With Law and Loss” is being published by Golden Antelope Press on Loving Day, June 12, 2026. She is a member of the Hearthstone CoHousing Community and sings in The Spirituals Project Choir.
SunLit: Tell us this book’s backstory – what’s it about and what inspired you to write it?
Jacqueline St. Joan: The memoir has two threads—one is public, the experience of becoming a county judge, including both the ordinary and the controversial aspects of that. The other is personal, the fracture of my family when I married across racial lines in Virginia in 1967, just days after the Loving vs. Virginia decision. So, the law has had a big impact on my life in more than one way.
SunLit: Place the excerpt you selected in context. How does it fit into the book as a whole and why did you select it?
UNDERWRITTEN BY
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St. Joan: I believe that life is fragmented, so my book (and the cover) are also fragmented. I chose these two excerpts because they both deal with interracial love — mine that began on a picket line protesting the war in Vietnam and another one I learned about in a case that became a controversial one in Denver. They do not appear together in the memoir, but I thought they would make interesting point/counterpoints here.
SunLit: What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write?
St. Joan: The actual inspiration for the writing came from my father’s death several months after I became a judge. A year after his passing I felt driven to write the story of the week he died, as it was a kind of turning point in my history with the family. That story led to another, to another and so forth, the way the rhythm of words leads you on.
SunLit: What did the process of writing this book add to your knowledge and understanding of your craft and/or the subject matter?
St. Joan: You could say I spent 35 years writing this book and that it was a kind of literary backdrop to my two novels, my poetry, and many essays as well as academic articles. The drafting of it has been a way of practicing all the craft I’ve learned along the way — at many writers conferences and retreats, in an MA program at University of Colorado, in writing groups, wrapped up in memoirs and books about memoir, and of course, alone at the computer screen.
“Your Verdict: A Judge’s Reckoning with Law and Loss”
Where to find it:
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SunLit present new excerpts from some of the best Colorado authors that not only spin engaging narratives but also illuminate who we are as a community. Read more.
It’s been the “clay,” if you will, that I’ve worked and worked for decades. Getting started wasn’t hard, staying committed was challenging, but learning to pare back, to delete, to restate phrases and rearrange paragraphs — often to say less — was probably the best lesson. So I’ll stop here!
SunLit: What were the biggest challenges you faced in writing this book?
St. Joan: I wanted very much not to harm anyone or damage anyone’s reputation—my parents especially, but also lawyers who appeared in my courtroom, and parties whose cases were assigned to me. They had their lives and their reasons. For me to put them in my book meant using those lives for my reasons, so I have tried to be very careful to do no harm.
SunLit: What do you want readers to take from this book?
St. Joan: Take what you like. I hope you find the stories interesting, but I also hope you enjoy how I use our shared language, and especially the small “memoir poetry” collection I include at the end of the book, which tells many of the same stories, feelings, and ideas, but in poetic form. I hope it appeals even to those who don’t particularly like poetry.
SunLit: Why do you focus on racism in your memoir?
St. Joan: I focus on racism because, on a personal level, I was raised in a racist culture (Jim Crow South), that rarely mentioned race at all. I had to unlearn a lot, which was greatly facilitated by my learning to love across racial lines. But that was not enough.
As a judge, the reality of race in the legal system, especially in the criminal justice system, is right in your face as you look out across a courtroom full of defendants. In my mind, to not think about the impact of that in your private life and in your public work is a failure of judicial responsibility as well as human responsibility.
SunLit: Tell us about your next project.
St. Joan: My next project is tentatively entitled: “There Are Rivers in Our Veins: a literary collage of memoir, history and fiction.” (Can you tell I like to mix things up? Fragments, collage, miscegenation…) The book explores my years of genealogical and historical research into my own family roots — Irish, Italian, German and my ex-husband’s — African and Russian Jewish.
It includes traveling to Mississippi, Germany, Ireland and Italy (not Ukraine, unfortunately) to trace back the origins, to learn about the ancestors. This is one of the gifts I have received from staying close to Black culture — the reverence for ancestors — their struggles, their hopes for us before we existed.
There were questions that research could not answer — “Why did Sol never tell us he had a father back in New Albany, Mississippi?” “What was sexual desire like for a young couple in the hold of an immigrant ship full of indentured servants?” These were questions that fiction could address, so I also wrote short stories based on the time, characters and circumstances I uncovered in my research.
Several have been published and one (“Crossroads at Guntown”) is forthcoming in the Spring issue of Valley Voices, the literary journal of Mississippi Valley State University, an HBCU close to where my father-in-law and his parents were sharecroppers 100 years ago. (By the way, I need an agent or publisher for this work, which is completed.)
A few more quick items
Currently on your nightstand for recreational reading: Jeanne Winer’s new novel, “Everyone’s Doing Their Best,” forthcoming in fall 2026. She is also a Colorado lawyer.
First book you remember really making an impression on you as a kid: All of George Orwell’s writing, especially his travel memoir/stories.
Best writing advice you’ve ever received: Tell the truth. Keep it real.
Favorite fictional literary character: I love Rhoda Manning, a character who appears and reappears in many of the stories and novels of Ellen Gilchrist.
Literary guilty pleasure (title or genre): Does The New Yorker count? Probably not. I don’t waste my sinning on books. My guilty pleasures are TV series — “Gray’s Anatomy,” “Annika,” “Brooklyn 99”!
Digital, print or audio – favorite medium to consume literature: Print
One book you’ve read multiple times: I rarely re-read a book, but one I go back to from time to time is Edward P. Jones’ “Lost in the City.”
Other than writing utensils, one thing you must have within reach when you write: a can of sparkling soda and a cat
Best antidote for writer’s block: tears
Most valuable beta reader: Merilee Schultheiss