Kent PhD student Janet McKnight has had a short story about the July 2006 War in Lebanon published in an anthology.<\/p>\n
Janet, who is studying a PhD in socio-legal studies at Kent Law School, wrote her story called, A Garden in Lebanon<\/a><\/em>, after spending time in Beirut learning Arabic and working for Human Rights Watch.<\/p>\n Janet said: \u2018I was inspired to write about the July 2006 War between Israel and Lebanon, from the perspective of a young boy who sees the conflict between his parents as the true war in his world.<\/p>\n \u2018The story is an attempt to introduce a bit of Lebanon’s history, to portray everyday struggles that endure in the midst of seemingly larger tragedies, and to show how conflict can be seen through different perspectives.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Fiction writing is a process through which human rights lawyers and scholars can think about conflict narratives beyond legal responsibilities, violations, and remedies, and can begin to explore how an individual character experiences war and justice.<\/p>\n \u2018Legal fiction, in essence, presents an opportunity to write the character as the narrative rather than the conflict as the narrative.\u2019<\/p>\n A short video, that Janet created to introduce the story, is available to view on YouTube<\/a> and more of Janet\u2019s work, including a podcast<\/a> linking law with literature, is available on her blog, Adventures on the socio-legal ocean<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n An earlier short story that Janet wrote, called The Maze<\/a><\/em>, about a fictional land at the beginnings of a civil war, was shortlisted by the New York Law Journal’s<\/em> Annual Legal Fiction Writing Contest.<\/p>\n A Garden in Lebanon<\/em> is included in Lightship Anthology 3<\/em>, published by Alma Books and is available to order (by telephone only) on +44 (0)20 8948 9550.<\/p>\n