Writing About Prison

My fiction has not included anything related to prison. I have two reasons for that; 1) I feel I need to write about the people I knew in Indiana who have no one else to write about them, this feels like an act of atonement for me; and 2) I have my prison journal.

But I will not ignore those who do write about prison life. I think there is a brutal ethical wrong in America's prison systems that needs addressed. (For more about this please read my Humanity's Complexity, Convicts). Therefore, I suggest reading Burn the Spot: Writing about people you encounter in prison carries special responsibilities by Piper Kerman. She wrote Orange is the New Black. She ends with advice good for all of us:

"If you want to write unforgettable stories and share ideas that will change your readers forever, you better get ready to burn the spot. I remember one of my codefendants, my crimeys, counseling me almost 30 years ago: “Practice lying. Lie all the time, even when you don’t need to. Get good at it.” But even a lie tethers back to some sort of truth, and fiction is grounded in facts. Many incarcerated people are incredibly good storytellers, whether their medium is the spoken word, prose, or playwriting, and I’d argue passionately that in writing about other people you must practice telling the truth. You can change the names. You can tweak identifying features to a certain extent, but you have to make those people palpably real to your reader. They are worthy of your truth.

sch 3/17/22