Queer Justice follows a defense lawyer whose young client’s explosive claim about a Supreme Court Justice draws him into a web of FBI surveillance, political coercion, and buried truths. What inspired the setup of your story?

The FBI memo I received after 13 years of FOIA litigation against the Bureau. It was buried in Director J. Edgar Hoover’s “Official and Confidential” files that he stored under lock and key in his personal office. In 1983, the FBI claimed in a letter to me that it had no files on the Supreme Court. After suing them, I unearthed tens of thousands of pages of files including the blackmail memo accusing Justice Abe Fortas of a homosexual encounter. Such an allegation, if disclosed, would destroy his career, true or not. The FBI protected Justice Fortas to gain leverage over him.

How did you decide where documented fact should end and informed imagination should begin?​

The jumping-off point for the fiction was where my factual investigation ended.

What did characters such as Cake and Max allow you to explore about queer life that the official records could not capture?​

The FBI files were written in Bureau speak based on an informant’s report. Nothing about their target’s humanity was included. Cake and Max allowed me to show professionals living their lives in secret because to do otherwise would subject them to prosecution and the loss of their professions.

Why was it important to extend the story into 2016 and 2021 through Mitch Jr.’s investigation?​

I wanted to show how flawed interviews conducted decades after the fact might be. Also, I wanted to make the FBI own the blackmail of a sitting justice in a powerful way. A modern queer attorney picking up the investigation seemed a good way to uncover further secrets.

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