Kristine Huskey is the director and clinical professor of law at the University of Texas School of Law. For eight years she worked at the large Shearman & Sterling in Washington, DC, where she was an attorney for international litigation and arbitration. Huskey has represented Kuwaiti citizens detained as ‘enemy combatants' at Guantanamo in both litigation and media in the media-watched Rasul case; Venezuelan national oil company in contract-dispute litigation; OPEC in antitrust litigation; Bermudian liquidators of insurance company in numerous contract and fraud litigations in the United States and in Bermuda; Mexican tomato industry in trade negotiations with U.S. Dept. of Commerce and Government of Mexico; art dealer in fraud and negligent misrepresentation suit against Christie's of London; Tibetan seeking political asylum; individual in Title VII suit against U.S. Government. She is a member of the United States Supreme Court, District of Columbia and Texas Bars, a director for the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International (TASSC), a member of the Women in International Law Interest Group Steering Committee, American Society of International Law, and a member of the Human Rights Section, American Bar Association. Huskey was awarded the 2007 Frederick Douglass Human Rights Award by the Southern Center for Human Rights for pro bono work representing detainees at Guantanamo Bay (awarded to all attorneys representing detainees); the 2007 Pro Bono Service Award by Human Rights USA for work seeking accountability for human rights abuses in China, on behalf of International Human Rights Law Clinic, American University, Washington College of Law; and the 2002 Outstanding Achievement Award by Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs for pro bono work in employment discrimination case. She was also featured as a "Woman to Watch" in Marie Claire magazine in December 2006. She lives in Austin, Texas. Aleigh Acerni is a writer and editor who began her career as a writer, columnist, and assistant editor for a regional newspaper in the South. Since 2005, she has been editor for skirt!, a monthly women's magazine with twenty print markets across the United States. A self-described “travel junkie,” Acerni has traveled all over the world, including Egypt, Bermuda, Mexico, Ireland, France, and Italy, and has lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Asheville, North Carolina; Charleston, South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; and Basalt, Colorado. Her news articles, columns, features, and personal essays have appeared in several local and national publications, and she has interviewed celebrities such as playwright Eve Ensler, actresses Kristin Davis and Virginia Madsen, and revolutionary chef Alice Waters. Acerni currently lives and works in Charlotte, North Carolina, with her husband, Ian Coyne, and two rescued golden retriever mixes. My Own Counsel is her first book.
