Lauren Sands on Clubhouse

Bio

For the past five years I have been fighting to save Peter S. Beagle, one of the most influential fantasy writers in the world. Peter S. Beagle is a Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Mythopoeic, and World Fantasy award-winning author and screenwriter, who has given generation of readers the magic of unicorns, haunted cemeteries, and disgruntled gods. His best-known novel is The Last Unicorn, which was made into one of the best-loved animated features of all time. In 2018, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America named Mr. Beagle the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master in honor of his lifetime of achievement.
Unfortunately, Mr. Beagle was the victim of elder abuse, fraud, and myriad other iniquities perpetrated by his former ‘manager’, not unlike the tragic story of Stan Lee. The abuse was happening right under our noses for many years before Mr. Beagle filed suit, causing untold physical and psychological harm. Mr. Beagle’s personal attorney, Kathleen Hunt, took on the elder abuse case, working for 6 years in multiple areas of law outside her usual practice; because the former manager had taken all of Mr. Beagle’s financial resources, Ms. Hunt did it all pro bono. We won the elder abuse lawsuit in 2019 - but the manager filed for bankruptcy less than twelve hours before the trial was originally scheduled to begin, in a last-ditch attempt to delay the inevitable. Last week, Mr. Beagle finally regained his entire library of intellectual property from the bankruptcy court - with the help of the lawyers at Loeb and Loeb who also worked tirelessly and for nothing upfront. Now, for the first time in over a dozen years, Mr. Beagle has control of all of his intellectual property.

Mr. Beagle’s experience is a cautionary tale of elder abuse, and the story must be told. Luckily, his mind is sound. He is one of the few who have fought off a predator and is not only still alive, but also singularly equipped to tell the tale. The duplicitous manager is still out there, and there is no reason to believe that he has changed his abusive and fraudulent ways. Mr. Beagle wasn’t the first artist to be abused in this way, and he is unlikely to be the last. His personal story will serve to empower not only his generation but many to come.