The Sentences That Create Us

By PEN America

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. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Haymarket Books
• Release date: Jan 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781642596779

Book preview

Praise for The Sentences That Create Us

This is one of the best books on writing that I’ve ever read. I couldn’t put it down. There are millions of stories locked behind bars, along with the millions of people our nation has caged. This astonishing book has the power to set those stories free. And I believe the truths contained in those stories just might free us all.

—Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow

When I was inside, I had no access to this manual. It didn’t exist. And so, I scraped along the best way I could. I talked to friends who plotted out novels by riffing on rap albums. I talked to friends who’d written hundreds of pages, by hand, fantasy novels that only they and I and those walking the yard would read. And we were all writers. But had we had this book—we would have been better writers.

—Reginald Dwayne Betts, from the foreword

"The Sentences That Create Us feels like a cosmic reminder that the most radical, life-giving art is created and received from the inside to the inside(s). This book, unlike any other I’ve read, takes seriously the beating hearts and curious minds behind the bars of a nation obsessed with punishing the most vulnerable."

—Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

A book rich with craft and the vitality of necessity. An essential collection and a gift to the world.

—Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Friday Black

"The Sentences That Create Us offers an illuminating array of tutorials and testimonials, reckonings and brass tacks. But above all, this volume is an homage to the power of writing to deliver each of us from our individual confines into the soaring infinity of our imaginations."

—Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit from the Goon Squad

Not only a powerful guidebook for all who are curious about developing a writing practice, this radical collection also demonstrates how people surviving and resisting the prison industrial complex of writing lives and communities behind bars, definitions of key concepts and terms, and samples and examples across genres (from poetry to journalism and more), this fierce resource equips readers with all the tools to write ourselves into freedom.

—Erica R. Meiners, coauthor of Abolition. Feminism. Now.

Having taught college-level English courses in prison for more than a decade, I am thrilled for a volume like this one: chock full of prose that is not only beautiful, inspirational and wise, but hugely helpful in a pedagogical sense—a perfect addition to all syllabi that involve writing in the carceral space.

—Baz Dreisinger, author of Incarceration Nations

"The Sentences That Create Us, PEN America’s new handbook, is both metaphor for the system and means of reinterpreting it. These writers— made on the inside—reveal the many ways that denial of a creative intellectual life on the outside is one of the pillars of our current carceral dependency. Shooting stars on every page, this book is instructional beyond its promise. Through it, we may just learn that we have always had better solutions than bars and walls."

—Gina Dent, coauthor of Abolition. Feminism. Now.

"The Sentences That Create Us is a wonderful immersive guide into the world of writing (and reading) that will explain, reinterpret and transform genres you thought you knew. It is a profound reminder that writing, when nurtured by those denied, has redemptive power not only to examine and interpret our lives, but also to change them."

—Donna Murch, author of Assata Taught Me

"Take advantage of every word, Caits Meissner tells readers of this powerful anthology. Its authors certainly have. The Sentences That Create Us is a practical tool of the ways currently and formerly incarcerated people and their allies, gifted writers all, seize the written word to do what prison refuses: celebrate the human. Here is a moving, hands-on guide to freedom writing."

—Dan Berger, author of Captive Nation

© 2022 Caits Meissner

Published in 2022 by

Haymarket Books

P.O. Box 180165

Chicago, IL 60618

773-583-7884

www.haymarketbooks.org

[e-mail]

ISBN: 978-1-64259-677-9

This is a project of PEN America, conceived, developed, and edited by the PEN America Prison and Justice Writing Program. The views and experiences presented by the contributors are theirs alone and do not represent those of PEN America.

Distributed to the trade in the US through Consortium Book Sales and Distribution (www.cbsd.com) and internationally through Ingram Publisher Services International (www.ingramcontent.com).

This book was published with the generous support of Lannan Foundation and Wallace Action Fund.

Special discounts are available for bulk purchases by organizations and institutions. Please email [e-mail] for more information.

Cover design by Melissa Joskow.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

To you who holds this book, to you who holds the pen.

Contents

About PEN America

Foreword by Reginald Dwayne Betts

Editor’s Note: How to Read This Book by Caits Meissner

PEN Prison Writing: Then and Now, In and Out by Susan Rosenberg

Part I: Foundations of Creative Writing

On Poetry by Luis J. Rodriguez

On Fiction by Ryan Gattis

On Nonfiction Memoir by Patrick O’Neil

On Dramatic Theater by Sarah Shourd

On Screenwriting by Alexa Alemanni

On Graphic Narrative by Andy Warner

On Journalism, edited by Jaeah Lee,

interviews and research by Kate Cammell

The Prison Journalism Project’s Quick Journalism Reference Guide by Yukari Iwatani Kane, Shaheen Pasha, and Kate McQueen

A Guide to Grammar and Punctuation by Chris Daley

After Grammar: Learning How to Transition by Emile DeWeaver

Re-Vision by Mitchell S. Jackson

Part II: Crafting a Writer’s Life in Prison

Introduction by Caits Meissner with Elizabeth Hawes

The Price of Remaining Human by Thomas Bartlett Whitaker

The Most Important Thing (and a Few Other Rules) by Curtis Dawkins

On Publishing from Prison by Saint James Harris Wood

Copyright Protection in Brief by Lateef Mtima, JD, and John R. Whitman, PhD

Burn the Spot: On Writing about People You Know by Piper Kerman

The Power of Grieving in Words by Vivian D. Nixon

And Still I Write: Creative Expression for Self-Advocacy by Alejo Rodriguez

Every Story Needs Hope: Why You Should Write about Prison by Derek R. Trumbo Sr.

Start and End with the Feeling of Home: How I Developed My Poetry Manuscript by Louise K. Waakaa’igan

On Writing and Staging a Play in Prison by Sterling Cunio

Gift Culture: On Collaborating through the Walls by Spoon Jackson

As for the Rest of Us: How to Win a Fellowship with No Support by Arthur Longworth

Prison Writer: A Meditation on Histories and the Sentences that Create Them by Justin Rovillos Monson

Part III: On Building Writing Community

Introduction by Caits Meissner

On Building Prison Writing Communities by Zeke Caligiuri

Remix the Plan, Return to the Purpose: How to Center Participant Storytelling in Writing Workshops by Nicole Shawan Junior

No Pen or Paper Required: The Art and Practice of Community Storytelling by Casey Donahue

Part IV: Writing Exercises

Translating to the Page by Doran Larson

On Using Small Stories to Illuminate Big Issues by Lauren Kessler

Writing the Poem of the Moment by Ellen Bass

Attention to Memory by Jennifer Bowen

The Inherent Magic of Objects by T Kira Mahealani Madden

Apple Is for Identity and Other Prompts by Anderson Smith

Personifying Location by Johnny Kovatch

A Letter to My Ancestors by Raquel Almazan

Imagining Worlds: From Page to Stage by Ashley Hamilton

Workshop Solitaire: Using Questions to Strengthen a Story by J. D. Mathes

Epilogue: A Writing Life in Community—from Inside Out by Randall Horton

Further Reading

Further Resources

Acknowledgments

About the Contributors

Permissions

Index

About PEN America

Founded in 1922, PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide. Our membership forms a nationwide community of writers and literary professionals, as well as devoted readers and supporters who join with them to carry out PEN America’s mission. PEN America advocates for writers under threat worldwide and public policies that bolster freedom of speech; celebrates the literature of eminent and emerging writers through awards, publications, festivals, and public programming; produces original research on pressing threats to free expression; and offers platforms to lift up the work and views of those whose voices have too often gone unheard or been ignored. PEN America is the largest of the more than one hundred centers worldwide that comprise the PEN International network. To learn more, please visit pen.org.

PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Initiatives

PEN America’s Prison Writing Program, founded in 1971 in the wake of the Attica riots, advances the transformative possibilities of writing and has offered many thousands of incarcerated writers free access to literary resources, skilled writing mentors, and audiences for their work. Our program extends PEN America’s mission of supporting free expression and encourages the use of the written word as a legitimate form of power. Historically named the PEN Prison Writing Program, which is now used interchangeably with PEN America Prison and Justice Writing, our initiative is among the largest and longest-running outlets of free expression for the country’s incarcerated population. It is made possible by the support of generous donors.

Outside of this publication, which is made available for free to anyone incarcerated, our signature offerings include the following:

Prison Writing Contest: Anyone incarcerated in the year before the September 1 deadline is eligible to enter in the categories of poetry, fiction, drama, nonfiction, and memoir. Awards are made for first, second, third, and honorable mention places. We receive over one thousand entries annually. Winners receive modest cash prizes, and their work is brought to new audiences through publication on PEN America’s website, a print anthology, and public readings delivered by celebrated authors on the outside.

Mentor Program: Consisting of more than three hundred mentors working one on one with imprisoned writers through individual mail correspondence, committee members, working writers, or MFA students provide careful criticism, tips on craft, and guidance in the fundamentals of grammar to incarcerated people around the country.

Writing for Justice Fellowship: The Writing for Justice Fellowship launched in 2018, which has since commissioned a small cohort of writers yearly—emerging or established, and both with and without justice involvement—to create written works of lasting merit that illuminate critical issues related to mass incarceration and catalyze public debate.

An important note: These initiatives are subject to shift, change direction, expand, and contract. To learn about the most updated program guidelines, please write to us at 588 Broadway, Suite 303, New York, NY 10012, or email us or invite a family member or friend to reach out at [e-mail]. Visit us online at pen.org/prison-writing.

Foreword

Reginald Dwayne Betts

There are not many things people can become while in prison that garners the public’s respect. Even for those coming inside with skills, the opportunities to make use of them are scarce: electricians, plumbers, educators, engineers all have their skills atrophy in the mundanity of count time and chow call. And then there is the writer.

Confronted with a nine-year prison sentence, I decided to become one. If we could go back in time and ask my sixteen-year-old self what that means, the question might have frightened me into disbelieving the dream I’d articulated without either reason or good sense. Back then, I could tell you neither what a novelist is nor what a memoir is, despite having read plenty of both. My desire to be a writer was rooted in technology. Or put another way, I knew the simplicity of an ink pen would always be within reach. Imagine that, more frightened than I’d ever been in life and the first thing I turned to, as both a kind of anchor and lighthouse, was the dream of being Walter Mosley.

It took years for me to figure out what kind of writer I wanted to become, and on the path of figuring it all out was PEN. Like many folks who will pick up this invaluable manual, I knew of the PEN Prison Writing Award. Believed, in fact, that the award was an opportunity for me, year after year, to do the work of being a writer: to send in the poems and wait for an answer, to announce to whoever was listening, I am more than a state number.

And yet, in a score of years, I’ve never forgotten my state number. Don’t imagine I ever will. That even if I’m struck down with dementia, in my dotage, I’ll still know that the number 251534 is somehow meaningful to me. Sometimes I get a bit sad admitting this. In prison, everyone called me Shahid. The name means the witness. I chose it for myself. Writing is a kind of witnessing. My state number is 251534. Writers don’t run from their memories; they turn them into black leopards that become men, into iambic pentameter, into meditations on what the world might be if we believe that the world might be more than it is.

When I was inside, I had no access to this manual. It didn’t exist. And so, I scraped along the best way I could. I talked to friends who plotted out novels by riffing off rap albums. I talked to friends who’d written hundreds of pages, by hand, fantasy novels that only they and I and those walking the yard would read. And we were all writers. But had we had this book—we would have been better writers. Imagine, Jason Reynolds once told me, the beauty of writing is that twenty-six letters is all we need to create all of this: Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Lucille Clifton, William Faulkner, John Wideman, Gertrude Stein, Marlon James, Toni Cade Bambara, Tayari Jones, N. K. Jemisin, Danielle Evans, Robert Jones Jr., Chinua Achebe, Natalie Diaz, Sherman Alexie, and any writer you name, including my friend Anthony Winn, who placed in the PEN Prison Writing Award contest, and John J. Lennon, who is featured here in this book, and me—we all use the same twenty-six letters. There is no technology more democratic than language. And so, let us sing.

Editor’s Note

How to Read This Book

Caits Meissner

I arrived at PEN America in 2018 with a background of facilitating poetry workshops inside jails, prisons, juvenile detention centers, and reentry programs. While I loved the experience of communing with fellow writers, I often became frustrated by the hard-drawn boundaries baked into the carceral setting. It was an ethical conundrum: crossing those lines would mean jeopardizing the vibrant arts program I taught through. But the work produced behind the walls—the generous, searching, and intelligent writing I was privy to each week—deserved a wider readership. Though its prison audience was an important one, I felt sure it wasn’t the only one. Not by a long shot.

Coming into the role of leading PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Programs offered the opportunity to collaborate directly with the country’s most hidden but creatively hungry talent. It felt liberating to meet as a peer with those interested in the same delight and rigor of literary life that I participate in and aspire to, rather than as a teacher bound to the one-note institutional power dynamic of civilian and inmate.

Here I was affirmed to indeed discover a diverse and active world of writers in prison, many of whom were completely unaware of the others in their widespread community. The first year we compiled anthologies for the PEN Prison Writing Contest, it was satisfying to receive letters from contributors who’d tucked in thoughtful notes about one another’s work. On more than one occasion, writers expressed how impressed they were with the quality of their peers’ stories, poems, essays, and dramatic scripts. Writers who had felt for years profoundly alone in their struggle were both angered and comforted to see, right there in print, just a glimpse of this vast landscape. There were others, many others, in prisons across the United States standing up against the same risks and threats. Underneath the underground lived another people-powered movement with no central leader: incarcerated writers reshaping the course of their lives, and maybe even the world, through the use of words. I pictured them all kneeling at the edge of the earth to set their messages in bottles asail.

Through the stacks of mail marked Prison Writing that arrive at the PEN America office each day, I also learned that, not unlike the value of literacy in the outside world, there are a million reasons to write while incarcerated—the polishing of skills necessary for effective legal work and grievance writing, letters to loved ones that puncture through the doldrums of repetitive days, the desire to self-reflect and make sense of a complex past, a healthy outlet to let off steam and wrestle with a fraught emotional life, and of course more. Writing, whether or not professionalized, can be a mighty tool that wields great power. In prison, I learned, it can also be a matter of life and death—not just in spiritual terms, but often literal too.

In 2018, just days after I’d inherited the decades-running PEN Prison Writing Program, I sat in the café of Housing Works Bookstore in New York City with Jackson Taylor, who had brought radical vision, bolstered by a tight-knit committee of volunteer advocates, to his oversight of the program for over twenty years.

"You should rewrite the Handbook," he said, we share a heart in this work, but I get the feeling you’ll bring your own pedagogy to the program.

I knew the slim volume of the Handbook for Writers in Prison well and respected its history. I had ordered copies for my own students and understood it to be a cherished resource, often marked up and passed hand to hand informally in prisons and jails. It seemed rare and amazing to me that the book was sent for free to anyone currently incarcerated who requested a copy, and I admired its tenacious trajectory: the book had grown from a grassroots photocopied pamphlet to a glossy-covered, self-published 120-page resource instructing in the basics of creative writing.

Jackson’s charge sat with me over the course of my first year on the job, as our team of two struggled to process the ceaseless flow of mail from incarcerated writers. The requests were wide-ranging and often sought beyond what we were equipped to offer: Can you find me an agent? Can you publish my book? (I had the same questions about my own work! How to let the inquirers down gently?) Overwhelmed by the truth I knew—that there was far deeper need than resources at hand—I questioned if I was capable of reimagining the Handbook to address all of these hopes and desires. Instruction on craft alone was not enough to illuminate the bigger picture. People were after more than the mechanics. They wanted to understand what constitutes the life of a writer and how they might go about creating one for themselves.

I began to think of the book as a text to grow with. One that can remind veteran scribes why they face the page again and again, while also inspiring a novice to try their hand at something new. The book would need to differentiate itself from the how-to-write genre by offering resources, strategies, and inroads responsive to the specific needs and challenges of writers in prison. A book that supports writers to launch their work into the world beyond the walls—while also embracing and cultivating the creative community within them.

The book, I thought, must spring from our program’s driving philosophy that writers in prison already are—or have the potential to be—as vibrant, multidimensional, and capable as writers on the outside but are sectioned off from the world’s countless literary possibilities. In this way, it must also bring to the forefront those very writers who could draw on their own lived experiences and expertise. My sense was that the book needed to be soaked in community—in feeling, practice, and form.

Propelled by the lessons of my first year on the job, I set to outlining the book and applied for the funding, time, and space necessary to bring the project alive. A California Arts Council grant helped secure our all-star California-based cast of authors to pen the creative writing introductions. A grant from New Balloon / Catapult solidified our ability to extend the book’s pages. PEN America’s many supporters made the ongoing work possible. Finally, I received word of acceptance to an artist residency at the wonderfully named The Strange, and my own creative process was officially underway. For a week, I turned on my email away message, packed up my laptop, and left New York City for the Catskill Mountains, where I was to vision the remainder of the book.

As I brainstormed, it became clear that the Handbook would benefit from the home and care of an established publisher. My dream was to join the roster of activist press Haymarket Books—books for changing the world—who’d published Angela Y. Davis, Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, Amy Goodman, Naomi Klein, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Rebecca Solnit, Mariam Kaba, and Howard Zinn, among many others. Though the book would be specifically geared toward writers in prison, I had an instinct that it might also be of interest to wider markets and audiences. I hoped Haymarket might agree.

As I worked, and the book’s contents began to take shape, I found myself describing what I was after with the following words: Inspirational. Aspirational. Instructional. Together, the collection of contributions you will find here brings to form what is largely ephemeral in nature: how to write, and how to be a writer. Along with a bounty of craft tips and philosophical ideas about why we write, here is just a taste of the contents:

•Tips on working with and around the severe institutional, emotional, psychological, and physical limitations that appear when building both a personal writing life, as well as a professional one, from prison.

•An approach to addressing trauma in writing and how to use writing as a way to support an authentic healing journey, one that centers accountability and restoration.

•Inspiration in the success stories of, and seeing strong writing samples from, writers with justice involvement (a common term to describe a person who has had interactions with the criminal justice system as a defendant, broadly encompassing various experiences of the individual writers in this book).

•The highlighting of successful creative relationships through the walls and describing how they came to be.

•Exercises for developing and sustaining a solo writing practice, as well as building creative community behind the walls.

•A realistic overview of the publishing industry to both temper expectations and offer some next steps—opening a sense of possibility to the different kinds of publishing that exists.

•Guidance on where to look for opportunities to kick-start a writing career, starting with those geared specifically for people in prison, and resources that lay out paths for where to go next.

Upon securing an interview with the legendary journalist Wilbert Rideau—who has rarely agreed to interviews over the past fifteen years he’s been home from prison—I added a fourth pillar: Historical.

I’m not doing this book for Caits, Wilbert said, I’m doing it for the prisoners.

Wilbert smiled but was dead serious. And of course, it was exactly why I’d pursued his contribution. This book is filled with writers who have broken boundaries, made the impossible real and challenged every notion about who is in prison, what they are capable of, and why it benefits us on the outside to listen. And so Inspirational. Aspirational. Instructional. Historical.

Here are a few keys to unlocking the treasure in this book:

Read everything. Start where you will, jump around, go where your interest is pulled, of course. But if you want to squeeze the most juice from these pages, take advantage of every word. What pops up in the drama section, for example, might inspire your journalism practice, and vice versa. The writing exercises are framed as community activities but can just as easily be used as a solo practice. Apply the wisdom flexibly.

Notice the way people talk to one another on the page—both through revealing their real-life relationships and also through the writers they mention in admiration or via a quote example. These names repeat and cross-reference throughout the book. That is a form of literary community in action.

While it was a conscious choice that the book center on writers with justice involvement, it felt important that the friends and supporters of writers in prison also be tapped. Across this book, the advice surfaces repeatedly: Find your allies on the outside. They can serve as a proxy for the digital tools you don’t have access to, create connections, or simply act as potent sounding boards and advocates. In my ideal worldview, the work of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated writers reaches into and dialogues with the larger literary community. For this flourishing ecosystem to grow, we will need each other.

The world changes fast, especially in regards to technology, language, and what is considered socially responsible. While terms and processes are subject to becoming outdated, the real fruit of this book is within the concepts that transcend time. I suggest that you focus your attention most intently there.

Read the brief biographies of the contributing writers in the back of the book to discover literary venues for submitting your work for publication. This is also a trick to carry over when reading essays, poetry, and short story collections. In the acknowledgments you’ll discover what journals first printed the work and get a sense of publications that might be a fit for you.

As the director of Prison and Justice Writing at PEN America, I find it important that we don’t perpetuate the erasure of the individual when considering language. In respecting autonomy, our commitment is to avoid the flattening state language of inmate, convict, felon, or even the more illustrative term of prisoner. As an editor, however, I kept the wide range of words to describe incarcerated people in the text, an especially poignant choice when the writer wielding the term is, or has been, incarcerated themselves.

While working on this book, homebound throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s worth a mention that I felt, in a more embodied way, how writing can become a lifeline of connection. Throughout the process of editing, I’d see five missed calls from my wonderfully persistent friend Spoon Jackson and kick myself, knowing I might have to wait another week to chat about his edits—prison phone calls go one way only. One particularly potent day, when he nailed the direction of the essay after a few fits and starts, I answered while in the car. In his bluesman voice, Spoon read to me as I drove the highway, laughing and crying aloud at the moments that moved me.

We got it! I told him.

Then he shared about his writing mentor, Judith, passing away, how she visits him in dreams.

We’re still collaborating, he says.

I lost my mother a year ago, I share, and we offer each other condolences.

She’s there, Spoon says.

I know, I say, then pause to think. Put that line about Judith in your essay.

And he does.

The editing process can be as deep and relational and generative and connective as any other shared experience. Months later when Spoon calls to check in, he tells me that the class he taught via the phone went well.

The high school students wrote their own poems, Spoon says, and next time we chat, I’ll read a few to you. I already answered their let— We’re cut off by the mechanical prison-phone lady who reminds us, again, You have one minute remaining.

A week later, Spoon makes good on his promise. I settle into the couch to close my eyes and hear the teens’ poems, their curiously innocent (and sometimes borderline offensive, but Spoon is kind-spirited about it) questions about his life in prison, their homages to the latest video game technology Spoon can only dream of. This is the gift culture Spoon references in his essay about collaborating through the walls, and I relish in my receiving position.

A final note: This book is primarily by and for people in the system. But it is also a book for anyone and everyone who is seeking hard-won lessons and inspiration for their own creative journey. No matter where you stand (or sit, dedicated at your desk), this book can teach you not only how to improve your writing but also how to be more fully human, if you let it.

PEN Prison Writing

Then and Now, In and Out

Susan Rosenberg

Editor’s note: Our work has depended on hundreds of dedicated volunteers from PEN America’s community since its inception. Susan Rosenberg is a longtime Prison Writing Committee member who has experienced the program from both sides of the wall—perspectives she reflects on through the following essay. Her observations are invaluable in filling in the gaps of our institutional memory and animating a sense of our shared history.

Not thinking about that dirty tiny crack where the floor and wall meet. Not hearing the flushing toilets, gates clanging, people shouting, bells ringing. Focused only on the great drama going on inside her mind. This quiet woman in a blue jumpsuit, sitting in a solitary cell, has not moved for hours. She is writing a short story.

The gap between what you can imagine or think in contrast with how you appear is oceans wide. In the thousand-yard convict stare, there is freedom. At least that’s what it was like for me. I was in the first maximum-security federal prison for women in 1991, where I joined a writing workshop. It met six times with five women. One, a cook in the kitchen with a fearsome reputation, sat down, hairnet still on, having come directly from her job. She dug out a piece of paper from the folds of her white jumpsuit and began to read. The poem was to her son, whom she hadn’t seen in over five years. Her words were filled with calm, clear longing and a rhythm that flowed. I sat back, startled and moved by her poem, the breath knocked out of me. Every single soul in prison, then and now, is a creative, full spirit, an individual. The cook was a full human being, fighting to give meaning and expression from the distorted life of captivity.

After that, armed with my mimeographed copy of the PEN prison writers manual (a predecessor to what you are now reading) and the book On Writing Well by William Zinsser, I decided to learn how to write for the deadline of the PEN contest for prisoners, which offered focus, structure, discipline, and hope. In 1993 I sent off my story to the Broadway address in New York City from lower Bama, the panhandle of Florida, stamped with Marianna Federal. Opening the response letter at mail call, I felt joy from the news. Winning first prize for the short story gave my life a different meaning. It propelled me. I walked out of prison eight years later with a master’s degree in writing from Antioch University.

At that same time, members of the Prison Writing Committee of PEN American Center, now PEN America, were fighting