Books

I’m an award-winning author of more than fifteen books.

No matter what I’m writing, I write books that shine light on difficult subjects with grace and humor.

I’m the author of the bestselling Life of the Mind Interrupted: Essays on Mental Health and Disability in Higher Education, the INDIE-Gold-award-winning The Freelance Academic: Transform Your Creative Life and Career, and the IPPY-Gold-medal award-winning Even If You’re Broken: Essays on Sexual Assault and #MeToo.

I’m the author of fiction, including the novels Entanglement, Chasing Chaos, andFallout Girl, and more

I’m the author of textbooks on law, legal writing, and composition and rhetoric, including The Complete Legal Writer (2nd edition 2020) and The Complete Bar Writer (2020), which are part of the Complete Series for Legal Writers the Core Grammar series of online learning tools, including Core Grammar for Lawyers (4th edition 2020); and more.

Trade Nonfiction

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  (c) 2019

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  (c) 2019

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  (c) 2017

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  (c) 2019

Fiction

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  (c) 2015

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  (c) 2015

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  (c) 2016

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  (c) 2017

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  (c) 2018

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  (c) 2021

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  (c) 2015

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  (c) 2018

Academic Texts

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  (c) 2020

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  2nd ed. (c) 2020

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  (c) 2016, 2nd ed. forthcoming

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  (c) 2010, 2nd ed. forthcoming

EVEN IF YOU’RE BROKEN: Essays on Sexual Assault and #MeToo

(c) 2019

**Winner of the GOLD Medal in the 2020 IPPY Book of the Year Awards.**

From the bestselling author of LIFE OF THE MIND INTERRUPTED comes an essay collection “rich in vulnerability and candor.”

How do we make a good life in a world where sexual violence always lurks in the shadows?

Pryal, rape survivor, law professor, and bestselling author, takes on the rapidly changing legal and social landscape of #MeToo and Title IX. Moving from the deeply personal to the socially critical, the essays in this collection are incisive dispatches from survivor territory.

In these fiery essays, Pryal documents reporting her rape to a university Title IX office, in grim, yet hilarious, detail. She turns her law-trained eye to the Bill Cosby case and the musician Kesha’s struggle to break free of her recording contract because of alleged abuse by her producer. This book is for survivors, those who love them, and those who want to make the world a better place for them. These stories strip away shame. They burn off fear. They lay bare the injustices survivors face and how we can fight them. Best of all, Pryal shows how she has fought those injustices herself—and by showing us, she inspires us to do the same.

“Rich in vulnerability and candor, Pryal’s evocative essays remind us that the survivor journey is far from linear, and that there is power and beauty in our imperfect journey.” -Andrea Pino, co-author of We Believe You: Survivors of Campus Sexual Assault Speak Out

THE FREELANCE ACADEMIC: Transform Your Creative Life and Career

(c) 2019

**Winner of the GOLD Medal in the 2019 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards.**

Higher education has changed—and we have to change with it. The Freelance Academic will show you how.

LIFE OF THE MIND INTERRUPTED: Essays on Mental Health and Disability in Higher Education

(c) 2017

Read the #1 Amazon bestseller that tackles mental illness with a “refreshing and raw honesty.”

Early in her career, Katie Pryal learned that being a professor isn’t easy if your brain isn’t quite right.

“I was a junior in college when I finally realized that I was different in a way that my medically inclined parents would call ‘clinical.’”

In these deeply personal, fiery essays, Pryal tells her story of transformation that began the moment she chose to publicly disclose her own mental illness and leave her career in higher education to begin fighting for a better world for people with psychiatric disabilities. The stories she tells are universal: the fear of stigma, the fight for accommodations, and the raw reality of living with mental illness in a world that pushes mental health to the margins. 

People carelessly call each other “schizo” and “bipolar.” A colleague is fired for “instability.” Pryal learned that, as a psychiatrically disabled person working in higher education, her very livelihood could be stripped away by the groundless suspicions of others. 

But the problem persists beyond academia. 

With candor and grace, these essays discuss the disclosure of disabilities, accommodations and accessibility, how to be a good abled friend to a disabled person, the trigger warnings debate, and more. While harrowing at times, Pryal’s story is ultimately one of hope. With this memoir, she aims to make higher education—and all of our society—more humane.

“Pryal writes with a refreshing and raw honesty.” –New York Times bestselling author Kate Moretti

“Pryal’s wit and humor shine through even as she tackles harrowing subjects, like living with depression and suicide.” -Award-winning author Kelly J. Baker.

ENTANGLEMENT: Hollywood Lights Series #1

(c) 2015

The #1 Amazon bestseller full of romance and suspense, Hollywood style. 

Will twenty-one-year-old Greta be able to let go of her troubled past and find love in Hollywood?

For Greta Donovan, happiness was always out of reach. Everyone betrayed her. No one could be trusted.

After leaving behind her deceitful father and dying mother to make a new life in Los Angeles, she moves in with her best friend, Daphne, an ambitious Hollywood up-and-comer, and befriends an aging movie star who’s like the father she never had. Soon, Greta has it all: a blossoming career, friends she can trust, and a new love who wants to give her the world. She can’t imagine her life being any better.

But in one night, she may lose it all. Daphne makes an outrageous decision that puts Greta in the path of a dangerous man. With the attacker still on the loose, will Greta escape with her life? Or will she trust her new friends to help save her?

“Equal parts heartbreaking and heartening, Entanglement shines a light on the interior lives of two flawed and fascinating women.” -Camille Pagán, #1 bestselling author of Woman Last Seen in her Thirties

“Pryal captures the complexity and love of intense early twenties friendships.” -Kate Moretti, New York Times bestselling author of The Blackbird Season

“Entanglement is an evocative story of enduring friendship, rivalry, and the ties that bind. A heartfelt, fabulous novel!” -Diane Haeger, award-winning author of Courtesan and The Secret Bride

LOVE AND ENTROPY: Hollywood Lights Series #2

(c) 2015

In this fast-paced new adult novella, a tension-filled weekend at a lake house will change the lives of two unlikely friends forever.

One hot North Carolina summer, Daphne Saito and her boyfriend, Sutton, encounter awkward physics geek Greta Donovan, a fellow college student at elite Cameron University. But while Daphne sees Greta as someone worth befriending, Sutton’s motives are far from pure. A romantic spark and a cruel joke send Greta and Daphne’s new friendship into a tailspin over a weekend that will either end in betrayal or redemption.

A retelling of Shaw’s classic Pygmalion (which also inspired My Fair Lady), and filled with unexpected heroism, Love and Entropy reveals what can happen when we let our vision of what others should be cloud our vision of who they are.

“Poignant and thoroughly entertaining.” –Kristy Woodson Harvey, author Lies and Other Acts of Love

“Utterly captivating … an intriguing novella of newfound friendship and youth.” -Tina Ann Forkner, award-winning author of Waking Up Joy

CHASING CHAOS: Hollywood Lights Series #3

(c) 2016

In this suspenseful follow-up to Entanglement, love, friendship, and betrayal create chaos in glamorous, yet often vicious, Hollywood.

Daphne Saito is a beautiful and talented Hollywood screenwriter with a seemingly perfect life. Yet her troubled past threatens to unleash chaos at any moment. Daphne has wandered from one meaningless relationship to the next, afraid to love. Harm has always come to those around her.

While planning the Hollywood wedding of her best friend, she meets Marlon and lets her guard down. Daphne feels hope for the first time in years. But on the night of the wedding, an unstable ex-boyfriend plans revenge and an enigmatic woman from Daphne’s past arrives with a vendetta of her own. Danger is on the horizon for those close to Daphne—and for her.

“As glamorous and mercurial as Hollywood itself, Chasing Chaos is a novel that glitters.” –New York Times bestselling author Eileen Goudge. 

“As psychologically astute as it is engaging.” -Kathryn Craft, award-winning author of The Far End of Happy

HOW TO STAY: Hollywood Lights Series #4

(c) 2017

A princess, a pauper, and a dog…

From the outside, it might seem like Miranda George has the perfect life—a wealthy family, a great education, a good paralegal job after college in her parents’ law firm. But all is not what it seems. When she’s assigned to Matthias Pino, the newest hire of The George Law Firm, she believes that he’ll be just like any other baby lawyer her parents have hired over the years: narcissistic, self-satisfied, and vain.

When Matthias Pino meets Miranda George, the princess of Winston-Salem, he doesn’t try to wine and dine her. Instead, he shows her where he grew up, in the trailer parks outside of Winston-Salem. He takes her to his brother’s dog rescue farm instead of to a fancy brunch. If she’s going to choose him, he wants her to choose the real him.

But when a family nightmare threatens to drag them apart, Matthias learns that Miranda isn’t nearly as tough as she seems, and Miranda learns that the hardest thing to do is to—quite simply—stay. 

“A poignant and layered narrative about the universal desire for something so elusive—a safe place to fall.”  -Amy Impellizzeri, award-winning author of Lemongrass Hope

“An intelligent romance, something all readers can relate to and enjoy.” -Brandi Megan Granett, author of Triple Love Score

“A quick paced, smart, and romantic read.”  -Karissa Laurel, author of the Norse Trilogy

FALLOUT GIRL: Hollywood Lights Series #5

(c) 2018

Family, deadly secrets, and a woman on the run in L.A.

The day she buries her mother, Miranda George jumps on a plane from North Carolina, telling no one where she’s heading. She wants to disappear and start over. She arrives on the Los Angeles doorstep of college friend Daphne Saito, and even though Miranda hasn’t seen Daphne in years, Daphne welcomes Miranda into her home and her makeshift L.A. family.

The problem is, Miranda is on the run from family. All family. Family, in Miranda’s experience, can get you killed.

Miranda takes off again, but this time her plan is much more sinister. She certainly doesn’t expect her friends to track her down. When they bring her back from the edge, the question remains: will Miranda be able to save herself and her newfound friendships? Or will she remain strangled by the past?

“A love story wrapped inside a heart-rending struggle for personal freedom.” –Sonja Yoerg, bestselling author of All the Best People

“A dangerous, sexy, motorcycle ride of a story.” –Sandra Block, author of the Zoe Goldman series

“A vulnerable, fresh story of the jagged nature of love and life.” –Amy Impellizzeri, award-winning author of Why We Lie

“Pryal weaves a compelling story of friendship, family, and love with an honest look at mental illness that doesn’t shy away from the painful realities so often hidden beneath the surface.” –Susan Bishop Crispell, author of The Secret Ingredient of Wishes

WICKED SOUTH: SECRETS AND LIES: Stories for Young Adults

(c) 2018

For good or ill—on the page or in life—few things are more alluring than the siren song of a secret.

At the heart of each story in this genre-crossing collection lies a secret. A boy who is not a boy at all, a neighbor with a mysterious identity, a tortured student with a list that isn’t what it seems, a girl who abandoned the person she used to be at the bottom of a river.

Conflict and possibility are embedded in a secret’s very nature…betrayal and conspiracy are encoded in its DNA. Secrets can transform. They can alienate, anger, or inspire. One thing is for sure: They make a great story.

Contributors are New York Times Bestselling author Emily Colin, Elizabeth DeVido, award-winning and bestselling author Lauren Faulkenberry, Amy Hyatt Fonseca, Lauren Fulcher, award-winning author Robin Kirk, John Klekamp, Karissa Laurel, and bestselling author Katie Rose Guest Pryal.

“A collection blazing with seduction, trickery, conflict, and grief.” -Heather Ezell, author of Nothing Left to Burn

“The nine twisty tales take readers to atmospheric corners of the American South (and beyond) filled with heartfelt characters and alluring mysteries.” –John Claude Bemis, award-winning author of The Wooden Prince and The Clockwork Dark Trilogy

WE ARE ALL ENEMIES OF THE STATE: And Other Essays on Speech

(c) 2019

When the president declares war against the media, he is declaring war against the people of the United States.

In addition to being a bestselling novelist, Katie Rose Guest Pryal is an attorney, an essayist, and a legal commentator. WE ARE ALL ENEMIES OF THE STATE collects some of Pryal’s writing over the past two years on how the First Amendment has fared under recent government administration. This book will appeal to anyone interested in free speech, freedom of the press, and how we must guard these important rights.

NICE WHEELS: A Novella

(c) 2015

Does true love ever come around twice?

Barbara, a medical resident, lost her Air Force pilot husband when his plane was shot down by enemy fire in Afghanistan. She wonders if she will ever love again, or even feel warm again. She focuses on her work as a dermatologist, and her friendship with a pilot in her dead husband’s unit.

When Chris, a fellow resident at the hospital, sets his sights her Barbara, she freezes him out. But Chris isn’t easily deterred. Will Barbara’s fear keep them apart? Or will Chris be the one to break down Barbara’s barriers?

Only available for free to subscribers to Katie’s author newsletter.