Prison Writing

PEN provides support for  writings by the incarcerated.

For more than four decades, PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing program has amplified the work of thousands of writers who are creating while incarcerated in the United States. By providing resources, mentorship, and audiences outside the walls, we help these writers to join and enrich the broader literary community.

 Program information includes;

PEN America’s new book, The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting A Writer’s Life in Prison (Haymarket Books) provides a road map for incarcerated people and their allies to have a thriving writing life behind bars—and shared beyond the walls—that draws on the unique insights of more than fifty contributors, most themselves justice-involved, to offer advice, inspiration and resources.

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Works of Justice is an online series that features content connected to the PEN America Prison and Justice Writing department’s programming, reflecting on the relationship between writing and incarceration, and presenting challenging conversations about criminal justice in the United States.

Closer to home is the Indiana Prison Writers Workshop.

Our creative writing workshop offers an outlet for justice-involved individuals to write and express. The Workshop also reaches those who have experienced violence in their homes and communities to engage in self-reflective writing. Participants find confidence and courage to write from their hearts. The voiceless become empowered and, together, we find hope and healing through written words. We don’t wait for feelings and problems to fester – we write about them. Support is offered for alumni once released from prison including publishing opportunities in online journals and in print. 

 The site has a page for student writing and a blog which also has inmate writings. Give them a look.

If prison serves a purpose beyond punishment for the sake if punishment (as if we were a nation of Marquis de Sades) then here is one tool to turn the criminal from crime 

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2/15/22