W&L’s Annual Law and Literature Weekend Seminar to Examine Colson Whitehead’s ‘The Nickel Boys’ The seminar will be hosted by Washington and Lee University School of Law and the Office of Lifelong Learning on Oct. 3-4.

By Emily Innes Stanley
September 3, 2025

Washington and Lee University School of Law and the Office of Lifelong Learning will host the 2025 Law and Literature Weekend Seminar on Oct. 3-4. This year’s program will focus on the novel “The Nickel Boys,” by Colson Whitehead, and feature a faculty panel discussion.

The seminar is open to the public, and registration is required. The cost of registration includes a catered reception and dinner on Oct. 3 and coffee and lunch on Oct. 4.

Whitehead is a New York Times bestselling author and the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. “The Nickel Boys,” published in 2019, raises issues related to wrongful convictions, Jim Crow laws and civil rights movements in the South, and is inspired by the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Florida, which operated for 111 years and dramatically impacted the lives of thousands of children. The U.S. Department of Justice investigated the Dozier School in 2010 and found many unconstitutional practices, including failure to provide due process and to protect youth from harm. In response, the Florida Legislature established a victim compensation program for people who attended the Dozier School.

“The Nickel Boys” follows Elwood Curtis, a Black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, Florida, who is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy (based on the Dozier School), where he and the other “Nickel boys” endure cruelty, abuse and neglect at the hands of the academy’s employees. The novel received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the Kirkus Prize and the Orwell Prize for political fiction. “The Nickel Boys” was adapted into a movie that premiered in 2024 and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture and for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Allison Weiss, professor of practice at W&L Law, will lead this year’s seminar. Weiss, who teaches legal writing and prison litigation, will be joined by Alex Klein ’16L, associate professor of law; Catherine Smith, the Vincent L. Bradford Professor of Law; Michael Hill, professor and chair of the Africana Studies program and director of W&L’s DeLaney Center; and Dave Caudill, a former member of the W&L Law faculty who now serves as the Arthur M. Goldberg Family chair in Law at Villanova University School of Law.

“Whitehead’s ‘The Nickel Boys’ is really moving, and many parts of the novel remind me of the clients we represent in the Parole Advocacy Practicum,” Weiss said. “The incomprehensible rules, near impossibility to get out and cruelty are prominent features in the Virginia Department of Corrections, too.”

As a bonus to practicing attorneys, the 2025 program will again seek approval for two hours of Continuing Legal Education ethics credit. Contact the Office of Lifelong Learning at lifelong@wlu.edu for more information.