Barry S. Willdorf was born in New York
City on March 6, 1945 and grew up in Malden and Gloucester,
MA, where he was one of the pioneer surfers on the
North Shore of Massachusetts in the early ‘60s..
He graduated from Colby College in 1966 with a B.A.
in History and earned a J.D. from Columbia Law School
in 1969. He also attended the University of Manchester
in England in the mid-sixties.
In 1970, Barry founded the Southern California Military
Law Project, one of a handful of legal defense organizations
run by civilians dedicated to defending U.S. service
personal charged with violations of military law that
involved opposition to the Vietnam War and/or racial
discrimination. Mr. Willdorf continued representing
members of the armed forces until 1975. During that
time, he co-authored a legal self-help book for military
service personnel: Turning the Regs Around. In 2001,
Mr. Willdorf published a semi-autobiographical novel,
Bring the War Home! fictionalizing his experiences
representing anti-war Marines at Camp Pendleton, CA
in 1970 and 1971. This novel is available as a free
download on Scribd. His legal publishing credits include
co-authoring How To Pass the LSATs, Monarch Press,
1969, a chapter in Matthew Bender, California Forms
of Jury Instructions, relating to real estate brokers,
appraisers and notaries and acting as a contributing
editor for Matthew Bender’s, Trial Master series.
He has also published several shorter works on the
Second Amendment.
Barry enjoys the highest attorney rating given by
Martindale and Hubbell. He is admitted to practice
in the U.S. Supreme Court as well as the courts of
New York, California and several federal jurisdictions.
During a legal career spanning four decades, he has
been a trial counsel in more than 100 trials, including
defending clients charged with serious felonies. He
has represented hundreds of victims of securities and
real estate fraud. He has served as a Judge Pro Tem
in the San Francisco Superior Courts and has been a
member of the panels of arbitrators for NASD, NYSE
and Kaiser. In 2005, he was named “Attorney of
the Year” by the San Francisco AIDS Legal Referral
Panel. Barry draws on these experiences in crafting
his fiction.
Barry’s historical novel, The
Flight of the Sorceress, (Wild Child Publishing, 2010) recently won
a Global E-Book Award for best
historical literature in the ancient history category. The
Flight of the Sorceress tells the story of how the newly-empowered
Roman Catholic Church waged religious war against women,
pagans, dissenters and “heretics” from
the points of view of two women, the fictitious Glenys,
a Celtic healer and the very real Hypatia of Alexandria,
renowned mathematician and the last librarian of Alexandria
who was brutally murdered by churchmen in 415 A.D.
The novel also describes the expulsion of the Jews
from Alexandria in 415 A.D. (perhaps the first modern-style
pogrom.) as well as the Roman Catholic Church’s
first heresy show trial conducted under the auspices
of St. Augustine in Carthage in 411 A.D.
Burning Questions, the first part of Barry’s “1970s
Trilogy” has just been published (August 2011)
by Whiskey Creek Press. Burning Questions, set in Gloucester
MA, addresses issues of teenage suicide, corrupt real
estate dealing and class prejudice. Part Two, A
Shot In The Arm, develops the protagonists and is scheduled
for publication July 2012.
