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Jerrianne Hayslett is a journalist, former court communications officer, and author of Valiant Vel and Anatomy of a Trial.

Jerrianne Hayslett is an author, journalist, and speaker whose nonfiction brings history — and the people who shaped it — vividly to life. A former newspaper reporter and editor in California and Nevada, she became the first Public Information Officer for the Los Angeles County Superior Court, serving through a decade of nationally watched trials. She is the author of Anatomy of a Trial: Public Loss, Lessons Learned from The People v. O.J. Simpson and Valiant Vel: Vel Phillips and the Fight for Fairness and Equality.

Jerrianne Hayslett grew up in Virginia before becoming part of a military family when her husband joined the U.S. Air Force. His assignments took the family from California to Taiwan, New York, Michigan, and ultimately to Tehran, Iran. She and her three children had to be evacuated from the country due to the 1979 Islamic Revolution —an experience that profoundly shaped her perspective and inspired a lifetime of writing. After returning to the United States, she earned a degree in communications and began a journalism career reporting for newspapers in California and Las Vegas.

In the 1990s she became the Los Angeles County Superior Court’s first Public Information Officer, beginning with the trial of the officers charged in the beating of motorist Rodney King and continuing through The People v. O.J. Simpson — work that placed her at the center of the relationship between the courts and the press. She has also led media workshops and consulting assignments in Albania, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and Indonesia.

Her first book, Anatomy of a Trial, drew on that experience. Her most recent, Valiant Vel: Vel Phillips and the Fight for Fairness and Equality, published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press, is the first biography of the pioneering civil rights leader.