Book Talk - Pink Crime: How the Law Is Punishing Pregnancy, Motherhood, and Gender Identity

About the Book and Program

This Bookend event of the 21st Annual Brooklyn Book Festival focuses on the release of the book Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity (The New Press, August 2026). The event will feature the book’s author, law professor at Indiana University Maurer School of Law and former prosecutor Valena Beety, and Tasha Mercedez Shelby, a writer and advocate whose story of wrongful incarceration is featured in the book. Ms. Shelby will participate in the program remotely from Mississippi, where she is incarcerated in state prison. These speakers will be in conversation with Brooklyn Law School Professor Kate Mogulescu, founder and Legal & Policy Director of the Survivors Justice Project. The event will look at what drives wrongful convictions of women and queer people, whose identities are recast in criminal court as evidence of guilt through bias, junk science, and entrenched stereotypes. An audience Q&A will follow. Please join us after the program for a reception.

The event is sponsored by Brooklyn Law School's Center for Criminal Justice.

THIS IS AN OFFICIAL 2026 BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL BOOKEND EVENT.

More Information

General inquiries: events@brooklaw.edu | (718) 780-0321

Requests for reasonable accommodation should be made to accommodations@brooklaw.edu at least 10 days before the event. We will do our best to address requests made after this time.

Important Note

Brooklyn Law School is committed to providing a forum for the discussion of important and sometimes controversial legal and social issues. The Law School provides space for dialogue and debate but does not endorse the views expressed by speakers, faculty, or participants at its events. The perspectives shared are those of the individuals involved.