The Sentences That Create Us
The Sentences That Create Us

Author: PEN America

Publisher: Haymarket Books

Published: 2022-01-11

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 1642596779

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The Sentences That Create Us draws from the unique insights of over fifty justice-involved contributors and their allies to offer inspiration and resources for creating a literary life in prison. Centering in the philosophy that writers in prison can be as vibrant and capable as writers on the outside, and have much to offer readers everywhere, The Sentences That Create Us aims to propel writers in prison to launch their work into the world beyond the walls, while also embracing and supporting the creative community within the walls. The Sentences That Create Us is a comprehensive resource writers can grow with, beginning with the foundations of creative writing. A roster of impressive contributors including Reginald Dwayne Betts (Felon: Poems), Mitchell S. Jackson (Survival Math), Wilbert Rideau (In the Place of Justice) and Piper Kerman (Orange is the New Black), among many others, address working within and around the severe institutional, emotional, psychological and physical limitations of writing prison through compelling first-person narratives. The book’s authors offer pragmatic advice on editing techniques, pathways to publication, writing routines, launching incarcerated-run prison publications and writing groups, lesson plans from prison educators and next-step resources. Threaded throughout the book is the running theme of addressing lived trauma in writing, and writing’s capacity to support an authentic healing journey centered in accountability and restoration. While written towards people in the justice system, this book can serve anyone seeking hard won lessons and inspiration for their own creative—and human—journey.

PEN America Handbook for Writers in Prison
PEN America Handbook for Writers in Prison

Author: America America PEN

Publisher:

Published: 2022-01-11

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 9781642596540

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The Sentences That Create Us provides a roadmap for incarcerated people and their allies to have a thriving writing life behind bars--and through walls--drawing on the unique insights of over 50 justice-involved contributors and their allies to offer advice, inspiration and resources.

Doing Time
Doing Time

Author: Bell Gale Chevigny

Publisher: Skyhorse

Published: 2011-11-01

Total Pages: 574

ISBN-13: 1628722185

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“Doing time.” For prison writers, it means more than serving a sentence; it means staying alive and sane, preserving dignity, reinventing oneself, and somehow retaining one’s humanity. For the last quarter century the prestigious writers’ organization PEN has sponsored a contest for writers behind bars to help prisoners face these challenges. Bell Chevigny, a former prison teacher, has selected the best of these submissions from over the last 25 years to create Doing Time: 25 Years of Prison Writing—a vital work, demonstrating that prison writing is a vibrant part of American literature. This new edition will contain updated biographies of all contributors. The 51 original prisoners contributing to this volume deliver surprising tales, lyrics, and dispatches from an alien world covering the life span of imprisonment, from terrifying initiations to poignant friendships, from confrontations with family to death row, and sometimes share extraordinary breakthroughs. With 1.8 million men and women—roughly the population of Houston—In American jails and prisons, we must listen to “this small country of throwaway people,” in Prejean’s words. Doing Time frees them from their sentence of silence. We owe it to ourselves to listen to their voices.

Doing Time
Doing Time

Author: Bell Gale Chevigny

Publisher:

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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Doing Time stirs readers by heightening their awareness of the struggle of men and women behind bars to keep their humanity. This collection of the best of PEN's annual prison writing contest celebrates fifty-one writers and their ability not only to write with passion and eloquence but also to create art in the most dire of circumstances.

Thank the Bloom
Thank the Bloom

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2023

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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"Thank the Bloom: 2023 PEN Prison Writing Awards Anthology is a testament to the power of this kind of community collaboration. Inspired by past lovers, current partnerships, old family dynamics, and steadfast friendships that both transcend prison walls and persevere within them, this anthology illuminates the ways in which art cannot survive without community care at its core. Using poetry, memoir, essay, fiction, and drama as their mediums, the writers featured in this anthology fight to create means of connection. And yet these themes defy genre, turning this anthology into something else entirely: a deeper exploration of self, of power, of institutionalized racism, of systemic isolation, and of the beauty that can be found in a garden bed."-- $c Provided by publisher.

The Named and the Nameless
The Named and the Nameless

Author: Pen America

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2018-09

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 9781725981157

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For over three decades, every year hundreds of imprisoned writers from around the country submit poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and dramatic works to PEN America's Prison Writing Awards, one of the few outlets of free expression for the country's incarcerated population. For the first time in this history, the 2018 Prison Writing Awards Anthology brings the winning works together in a beautiful print collection to share with the world.

Doing Time
Doing Time

Author: Bell Gale Chevigny

Publisher: Arcade Publishing

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 9781559704786

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"Doing time." For the prison writers whose work is included in this anthology, it means more than serving a sentence; it means staying alive and sane, preserving dignity, reinventing oneself, and somehow retaining one's humanity.