Morris Hoffman

I was a trial judge and a legal academic for 30 years, and am a member of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Research Network on Law and Neuroscience. I still teach and write in the areas of criminal law and neurolaw. I've written one non-fiction book, The Punisher's Brain: The Evolution of Judge and Jury (Cambridge 2014), and co-authored another, with four of my MacArthur colleagues, Brain Science for Lawyers, Judges, and Policymakers (Oxford 2024). When I retired from the bench in May 2021, I started, quite mysteriously, writing fiction, and, just as mysteriously, I cannot stop. My debut novel, Pinch Hitting (Black Rose Writing 2024), was short-listed for the 2024 CASEY Award for the best baseball book of the year, the only novel on the list. Boy of Heaven (Resource Publications 2025), a Catholic novella in fable form, is something quite different indeed. And I hope my next efforts will continue the trajectory of having no trajectory at all, except being launched from what for me remains the profound mystery of writing.