Deborah Zalesne is a Professor of Law at the City University of New York School of Law where she teaches Contract Law from a social justice perspective. With Christopher Blackwell, she co-founded Empowerment Avenue's Writers Development Program for aspiring incarcerated writers. She has published extensively in the areas of race and gender justice and is the author of two books and over forty scholarly articles for publications such as the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism and the Columbia Journal of Race and the Law.