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

info@haymarketbooks.org

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 info@haymarketbooks.org 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.

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 prisonwriting@pen.org. 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 for the rights of writers in US prisons. In 2001, while the drug war and its devastating racist and genocidal consequences were being hardwired throughout the criminal justice system, very few people, let alone organizations, were supporting prisoners’ artistic lives. At PEN, the work was viewed through a writer’s lens, as a creative act done in prison. The Prison Writing Committee understood the work submitted was literary: poetic, crafted, painful, furious, political, analytical, funny, sardonic, spiritual, and at times utterly brilliant. The committee’s approach had no sociological or criminological overlay. Instead, there was an underlying principle that redemption comes in the act of creating and doing, and the committee was not to be the judge of anything but the literary merit.

The year 2001 was nearly ten years before Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow and thirteen before Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. Tupac Shakur and others had been rapping about prisoners, and in 2003 Angela Davis would publish Are Prisons Obsolete?, but the 2.3 million people in US prisons were largely unheard. The terms mass incarceration, prison-industrial complex, and carceral state were unrecognized by the vast majority in this country. The isolation, brutality, and injustice of incarceration were understood only by those impacted by the carceral system. It was after the Attica state prison rebellion in 1971 that the PEN Prison Writing Committee was formed, and in 1973 it launched the first national prison writing contest—still running to this day. While the pendulum of politics and public opinion has swung back and forth between rehabilitation and revenge through these last five decades—always veering toward revenge—the outside supporters of prison writing have carried on, reading and mentoring and creating public platforms for incarcerated peoples’ writings.

Since 1973, PEN has received over a thousand submissions a year from writers in prison. Doing Time: 25 Years of Prison Writing, edited by Bell Gale Chevigny, was published in 1999 and reissued in 2011. In the intervening years, several of the winners were executed, died from medical neglect, or released on parole only to die quickly from age, poverty, or lack of care. Though an uphill battle, a few have gone on to success and significant careers.

When I got out of prison, Bell Chevigny, who had been a mentor to me, said, “Come talk with the Prison Writing Committee; we need former prisoners to join.” I read thousands of submissions over the next decade. Despite having been in prison for over sixteen years, and knowing the grinding degradation firsthand, it was overwhelming to read from the outside. It was retraumatizing, inducing survivor’s guilt, and at the same time a great relief to stay in the moment, to hold the spectrums of grief and joy, freedom and less freedom, pragmatism and hope.

The debates and discussions over the years within the Prison Writing Committee have included, Do we see this writing as coming from prisoners first, or from writers first? Is prison writing its own genre? Do we help these writers publish? How do we ensure that they are not retaliated against by prison administrations? How much do we invest as individuals in the writers we are reading? What is the relationship of the formerly incarcerated people’s movement to our work? Why aren’t more women submitting? How do we reach transgender prisoners? Can we intervene when a writer is in solitary confinement or on death row? The prison system is fundamentally an institution based on slavery and genocide aimed at Black and brown people—how does doing a contest oppose that? And very important: Can we do this contest from an abolitionist-informed stance, and if so how?

Amid these discussions, the different administrations of PEN swung back and forth in their support of the Prison Writing Committee and prisoners’ writings. What kept the committee alive in those times was the recognition by its members that it was wrong to allow the erasure of these human beings and the unwavering commitment of both the outside volunteer writers and the writers in prison to keep on. After Pell Grants were eliminated for incarcerated people in 1994 and prison life entered an even darker time, the contest continued. While political prisoners used their platforms to highlight human rights violations in prisons, the contest continued. While outside writers began to use other avenues to influence public opinion toward justice for the imprisoned, the contest continued. Finally, as criminal justice reform began to ascend again and the movement for abolition grew, the committee built links to them, and the contest became a revitalized place where the voiceless could be heard.

Poet, political prisoner, and my comrade, Marilyn Buck, wrote, “For prisoners, writing is a life raft to save one from drowning in a prison swamp. I could not write a diary or a journal; I was a political prisoner. Everything I had was subject to investigation, invasion and confiscation. I was a censored person. In defiance, I turned to poetry, a way of speaking sparely, but flagrantly.” After a lifetime of resistance and about three decades in prison, Marilyn was released in August 2010 and died three weeks later at home, surrounded by her friends.

Political activist and prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal could have been speaking about the act of writing when he wrote from death row, “I spend my days preparing for life, not preparing for death.” The question about prisoners being writers first or prisoners first is really the wrong question. It is not an either/or situation. We are writers writing under extreme and extraordinary conditions that most people cannot begin to imagine. After all, that is the threat that prison represents: to keep those inside them out of sight and out of mind. The struggle to create inside of a living death is an enormously difficult and at times dangerous endeavor. In reading the writings of prisoners, we are looking in a mirror that reflects our shared humanity. We are not so different from the millions inside American prisons. Their relief is our relief; our freedom is limited by their imprisonment. To read, mentor, listen to, and embrace prisoners’ writing compels us to bear witness and brings us all closer to liberation.

The prison writing contest continues and expands, and with full organizational support, PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing initiatives are now realizing their broadest vision to date with an expanded mentorship program and public events. It will continue to give voice to the incarcerated until we bring about the time when prisons are no more. Let us make that happen by loving every single prisoner as the full human being that they are, and learn from their art.

On Poetry

Luis J. Rodriguez

What is madness but the nobility of soul at odds with circumstance.

Theodore Roethke

Poetry as Soul-Talk

My Story

I came to the power of poetry even before I knew what poetry was about. At age sixteen I sat on “murderer’s row” in the Hall of Justice jail during the 1970 Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War in East Los Angeles—the largest antiwar protest in a community of color at the time. After sheriff’s deputies attacked a largely peaceful group at Laguna Park, the so-called East LA riot ensued, leading to the murder of three people, including the Chicano journalist Ruben Salazar. I was one of five cholos looking at possible charges in those deaths. I had a cell next to Charles Manson. The first night, two murder suspects in my cell put a razor blade to my neck, but I stood up to them. They laughed and removed the blade—then we played cards all night long!

But I had no interest in cards. Someone had paper and a pencil. I began to write. Thoughts, vignettes, anecdotes. I had no training in writing, but I loved to read, having spent hours in downtown’s Central Library when I was homeless. This scribbling opened a door to my own gifts. Despite having been punished as a child for speaking Spanish in schools, and not taught English very well, language became one of my most important attributes—which everyone has, although not necessarily with words.

Sheriff’s deputies eventually released me. I’m convinced this had to do with activists taking photos and film of the rioting that showed only police beating and killing people, including Salazar. But the “damage” had been done. I began to turn away from my youth of crime, gangs, and drugs to social justice issues and political activism. When I did my last jail stint at age eighteen, facing years in prison until community members wrote letters and showed up in court on my behalf, a judge gave me time served and my freedom. I vowed never to return for criminal acts—a promise I’ve kept for almost fifty years.

Here is a snippet of what I wrote in the Hall of Justice:

The calling came to me while I languished in my room, while I whittled away my youth in jail cells and damp barrio fields.
It called me to life, out of captivity, in a street-scarred and tattooed place I called body.

I’ve been meeting that call ever since. I now have sixteen books in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, children’s literature, essays, and memoir. I survived the bullets, the long prison terms, the drug overdoses, unlike most of my homies. But I never forgot any of them.

Mentored by Manual “Manazar” Gamboa, a Chicano poet and organizer who turned his life around after seventeen years in prison and twenty years as a heroin addict, I helped facilitate a creative writing class in California’s Chino prison in the fall of 1980. By then I learned poetry and other genres in college night classes and writers’ workshops. I also worked as a daily newspaper reporter. I’ve now been coming to prisons, jails, and juvenile lockups for over forty years— doing onetime readings, talks, or healing circles, as well as teaching for weeks on end.

What follows is a summary of what I’ve learned about imparting and drawing out poetry with incarcerated men, women, and youth in close to twenty states around the country—and in penal institutions of Mexico, Central America, South America, and Europe.

What Is Poetry?

As most people know, there’s “poetry” in all manner of writing. There’s poetry in how one comports oneself, the way one strides, or dances. Poetry means movement with such grace, rhythm, and poise that one who observes is aesthetically held, intoxicated perhaps, by the compelling relationship of the parts to the whole. Poetry as a literary genre is where language, imagery, ideas, and emotions are the movements that compose the dance. While a poem can have the narrative elements we find in fiction, nonfiction, and drama, these are not its main dynamics. Poetry is how words and thoughts swim expertly and effectively in a sea, even stormy, of syllables, sentences, and senses.

For me, poetry is primarily soul-talk—conversing from human depths. We call this voice—each poet has their own. While poetry can be shaped by form—from songs to sonnets to slams—it has three key aspects applicable to any art: clarity, gravity, and integrity:

•Clarity of idea and expression

•Gravity of substance, its “weight,” even if written in a comedic or light fashion

•An integrity that allows it to flow in a captivating, pleasing manner

Building a Poem: Opening the Heart, Sketching the Face

In Mexica (Aztec) cosmology, the metaphor for person is Face and Heart (In Ixtli, In Yollotl). The aim for any person is to have one’s face and heart converge—wisdom and intuitive knowledge in face; courage and firmness in heart. The aim is to go beyond conflict between what one feels and what one shows, what’s raw and what’s refined— where inner and outer become one. Both Face and Heart have to be cultivated so the core is adequately represented on the outside.

Poetry, like a person, has its own “Face and Heart.” What it denotes and what it connotes. There’s tension between artifice and meaning; between form and content; what it’s trying to say and how it’s saying it. Poetic shapes run the gamut—from established, often called fixed, forms to looser or free forms. The art of poetry is how to resolve this tension in the writing or performance.

Opening the Heart

Poetry, more than any genre, taps into the wells of trauma, betrayal, abandonment, grief, anger, and joy. Not just all-consuming emotions, but precise feelings. Poetry can start small—an image, a thought, an inspiration. Write with heart first, then all else will follow. For many poets, form is peripheral to the heart and soul of a poem. First, you must become a receptor for poetry—seeing sparks in the palm of a hand, the face of a friend, a crack in a wall, or a homeless woman sleeping on a bus stop bench. The struggle is to find the language that best encapsulates from where the blood of a poem first flows.

Here are prompts to move the imagination and develop source material for your poems:

•You are on a train that will make three stops. The train is your life; each stop is a station in that life. A stop could be the first day of school, the first time you fell in love, or when you first entered an incarcerated setting. At each station, however, you leave baggage and pick up baggage. Write about what you left behind and what you picked up.

•The key log is what needs to be removed to free up any logjam. Lumber workers are trained to determine the key logs in real logjams, which occur as logs rush down a river to reach sawmills. What are, or have been, the key logs you must remove to open up personal logjams?

•Write about the “fogs” in your life that have clouded judgments, decisions, actions. Such fogs don’t allow you to see beyond what’s in front of you. These fogs might be “red” representing rage, “white” representing numbness, and “black” representing the abyss, among others (these colors have nothing to do with skin color, by the way). Describe a fog you’ve been in—or more than one. What allowed you to get rid of them?

•Every time a guitar is played, it becomes out of tune. Life is the same way. To live means to go off balance, into disharmony, out of alignment. You are a guitar—how do you tune up the six strings of your life? Name what each string represents, such as (1) family, (2) work, (3) friends, (4) health, (5) artistic expression, (6) love. Or aspects of who you are: (1) psychological, (2) emotional, (3) intellectual, (4) sexual, (5) physical, (6) cultural. Or any number of things. What is your “tuning” practice or activity?

These prompts don’t just encourage writing but also draw on deep sources that can lead to formidable therapeutic changes. Poetry taps into the wounds of life, which if properly accessed can be the wombs of new directions, outlooks, goals. What follows is an instructional guide that will offer a foundation of poetic elements. It is impossible to include them all, but it’s enough to serve as a starting point.

Sketching the Face: Metaphors and Similes

The building blocks of poems include metaphors and similes. Both use comparisons to describe a person or thing. Similes use the words like or as to strike a comparison: “swift as a frightened deer” or “you are like soft rain.” Metaphors do this directly: “my family is a washing machine” or “you are a cloudy day.” These comparisons aren’t literally true, but a true aspect or characteristic of an object, environment, or person comes alive by linking this to a comparable aspect or characteristic in something else.

Many people have noted that children create metaphors organically. Around the time children are beginning to speak, and unable to draw on a larger vocabulary, they will use comparisons to describe what they see or feel. For example, when one of my sons, Ruben, was around three or four years old, my wife, Trini, his mother, walked into a room with a new perm from the hair salon (her hair is normally straight and long). Ruben looked up and remarked, “Gee, Mom, you got scribbles on your head!”

On another occasion, Trini asked our youngest son, Luis, when he was around the same age and suffering from a stomachache, what the pain felt like. He said, “My stomach feels like it’s making angry faces.”

Metaphors and similes are a rich way to enliven any poem. They are the palette of a word painting. Images have a stronger imprint in the mind than a word that represents the same thing. They also evoke an emotional, rather than rational, response. “Painting a poem” is also a metaphor.

Poetic Forms: A Starter Guide

Poetic forms are, as one critic stated, like trying to put a bird into an empty cage. The bird is the imagery, sentiments, and word sense you want in there. As society continues to hold people in cages—until this changes systematically in a healing and healthy way—filling a “cage with the right bird” is a metaphor for stretching one’s imaginations within these seemingly impossible limitations. There are established poetic forms one should be acquainted with—good to know even if one gets rid of the “cage” altogether.

Below are a few to consider.

Quatrains

Quatrains are four-lined stanzas in larger poems or complete poems. Stanzas are units of poetic lines organized by an aesthetic principle or set of principles. There are fifteen possible rhyme schemes, but the most common at the end of verse lines are AAAA, ABAB, and ABBA. Rhyme is where words with similar-sounding endings are used as a way to have music without music.

Here’s an example of a poem with four-quatrain stanzas that follows the ABBA rhyme scheme from the illustrious Robert Frost, an early twentieth-century US poet, who wrote in a colloquial American style about New England’s rich rural terrain:

Tree at my window, window tree, (A)
My sash is lowered when night comes on; (B)
But let there never be curtain drawn (B)
Between you and me. (A)

Vague dream head lifted out of the ground, (C)
And thing next most diffuse to cloud, (D)
Not all your light tongues talking aloud (D)
Could be profound. (C)

But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed, (E)
And if you have seen me when I slept, (F)
You have seen me when I was taken and swept (F)
And all but lost. (E)

That day she put our heads together, (H)
Fate had her imagination about her, (I)
Your head so much concerned with outer, (I)
Mine with inner, weather. (H)

Sonnets

Sonnets are fourteen-line poems that, in English, are generally in iambic pentameter with a variety of rhyme schemes, such as the Shakespearean sonnet of ABABCDCDEFEFGG. An iamb is a metrical foot of a short or unstressed syllable followed by a long or stressed syllable; pentameter is a meter of five measures or feet. In most sonnets, the last two lines are a closing summarizing couplet with a volta or turn in rhyme pattern as a transition.

Here is one of Shakespeare’s sonnets:

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame (A)
Is lust in action, and, till action, lust (B)
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, (A)
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust, (B)
Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight, (C)

Past reason hunted, and no sooner had (D)
Past reason hated as a swallowed bait (C)
On purpose laid to make the taker mad; (D)
Mad in pursuit and in possession so, (E)
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme, (F)
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe, (E)
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream. (F)
   All this the world well knows, yet none knows well (G)
   To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell. (G)

As with all forms, a poet can establish their own kinds of sonnet— or take other sonnet forms. Here’s a recent sonnet from National Book Award-winning poet Terrance Hayes from his 2018 collection American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin; this sonnet happens to include a number of poetic terms we discussed earlier, but it also exhibits other line principles, such as no rhyme, a longer or shorter meter per line, or unmetered, as the case can be.

I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison,
Part panic closet, a little room in a house set aflame.
I lock you in a form that is part music box, part meat
Grinder to separate the song of the bird from the bone.
I lock your persona in a dream-inducing sleeper hold
While your better selves watch from the bleachers.
I make you both gym & crow here. As the crow
You undergo a beautiful catharsis trapped one night
In the shadows of the gym. As the gym, the feel of crow-
Shit dropping to your floors is not unlike the stars
Falling from the pep rally posters on your walls.
I make you a box of darkness with a bird in its heart.
Voltas of acoustics, instinct & metaphor. It is not enough
To love you. It is not enough to want you destroyed.

Ghazals

Ghazals are generally five or more couplets with no direct ties to each other except in theme or pattern. Historically, ghazals captured the experience of love, or lack thereof. The form has roots in seventh-century Arabic poetry, which spread to South Asia and beyond. In the ghazal below, notice that the first stanza’s last words are the same, and the second line in the following stanzas repeat this word. Formally, in the last stanza, the poet addresses themselves. Many contemporary poets now employ this form, and the themes have stretched to other subjects. Here’s one from renowned twentieth-century Kashmiri American poet Agha Shahid Ali titled “Tonight.”

Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell tonight? Whom else from rapture’s road will you expel tonight?

Those “Fabrics of Cashmere—” “to make Me beautiful—” “Trinket”—to gem—“Me to adorn—How tell”—tonight?

I beg for haven: Prisons, let open your gates— A refugee from Belief seeks a cell tonight.

God’s vintage loneliness has turned to vinegar— All the archangels—their wings frozen—fell tonight.

Lord, cried out the idols, Don’t let us be broken; Only we can convert the infidel tonight.

Mughal ceilings, let your mirrored convexities multiply me at once under your spell tonight.

He’s freed some fire from ice in pity for Heaven. He’s left open—for God—the doors of Hell tonight.

In the heart’s veined temple, all statues have been smashed. No priest in saffron’s left to toll its knell tonight.

God, limit these punishments, there’s still Judgment Day— I’m a mere sinner, I’m no infidel tonight.

Executioners near the woman at the window. Damn you, Elijah, I’ll bless Jezebel tonight.

The hunt is over, and I hear the Call to Prayer fade into that of the wounded gazelle tonight.

My rivals for your love—you’ve invited them all? This is mere insult, this is no farewell tonight.

And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee— God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight.

Haikus

Haikus are of Japanese origin and in English consist of three unrhymed lines: five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second, and five in the third. A syllable is a unit of a whole word, or parts thereof, with one vowel sound—for example, there are two syllables in crater (cra/ter) and three in cathedral (ca/the/dral). Haikus primarily address nature, in particular the seasons, and sensations from nature. The most celebrated Japanese poet of the form is Matsuo Bashō, who lived during the seventeenth century. Here’s a sample:

On the withered branch
A crow has alighted—
Nightfall in autumn.

However, the form has grown to include all subjects and materials. Here are several haikus from a selection called “Haiku” from formerly incarcerated Black poet Etheridge Knight in 1986’s The Essential Etheridge Knight.

Eastern guard tower
glints in sunset; convicts rest
like lizards on rocks.

Morning sun slants cell.
Drunks stagger like cripple flies
On jailhouse floor.

To write a blues song
is to regiment riots
and pluck gems from graves.

Rap and Spoken Word

Rap uses words—usually with something powerful or provocative to say—with beats. Rap lines can work in accord with such songs or rhythms—or in discord. Creativity of line and sound is what makes the words flow, change, become unique. The time signature for most songs in the early years was 4/4. Rappers utilize a diversity of sound that can be in 4/4 but with skill and practice can extend or distort any time signature. Here are excerpts from the lyrics to Chicago rapper Common’s 1994 hit, “I Used to Love H.E.R.” H.E.R. stands for hip-hop in its essence is real. The lyrics presented below tell the often heartbreaking odyssey of hip-hop as if it were a woman that over time became disrespected and broken:

I met this girl, when I was ten years old
And what I loved most she had so much soul
She was old school, when I was just a shorty
Never knew throughout my life she would be there for me
On the regular, not a church girl she was secular
Not about the money, those studs was mic checking her
But I respected her, she hit me in the heart
A few New York niggas had did her in the park
But she was there for me, and I was there for her
Pull out a chair for her, turn on the air for her
And just cool out, cool out and listen to her
Sitting on a bone, wishing that I could do her
Eventually if it was meant to be, then it would be
Cause we related, physically and mentally
And she was fun then, I’d be geeked when she’d come around
Slim was fresh yo, when she was underground
Original, pure, untampered, a down sister
Boy I tell ya, I miss her. . . .

Hip-Hop and Slam Poetry

Slam poetry is primarily spoken word in competition, where the body, voice, and poem are one. It’s multidimensional like rap, but there’s no music except what you bring to the movement of mouth and body. This genre arose out of the competitive poetry events that impresario Marc K. Smith at Chicago’s Green Mill Lounge made famous beginning in the mid-1980s. Generally, three-minute poems were performed and then rated by judges or an audience. Poets’ “game” had to be redefined and sharpened. The best poets had a genius with words and imagery, but also a powerful presence, owning the page and stage. Like any kind of poetic expression, slam poetry can draw from mythology, newspaper clippings, memory—from anything that can be translated powerfully to an often-raucous crowd.

Blank or Free Verse

Verse not strictly bound generally consists of blank verse (iambic pentameter with no rhyme) and free verse (words eschewing regular metrical pattern and a consistent line length). Blank and free verse stem from the Renaissance period in Europe. In English, it includes the works of John Milton, William Blake, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Free verse is the most widespread poetry published today. Walt Whitman from the mid- to late nineteenth century is considered the father of American free verse—and Emily Dickinson, of the same period, its mother. While other elements of the craft still apply—rich metaphors, internal rhyme or assonance, pauses inside of lines (caesuras), and staccato wordplay—the white space helps shape the poem, determined by diverse factors such as visual elements, breath, or interesting sounds. Lines can be as short as a syllable or long beyond the page’s margins. Elements such as enjambment are used widely. Enjambment is the opposite of an “end-stopped line.” This is when a line continues to the next line without a pause or juncture, and it can be played with to produce surprising or multiple meanings.

Here is an example of free verse from Native American writer Louise K. Waakaa’igan. This poem won first place in the 2017 PEN Prison Writing Contest. It’s titled “This Is Where”:

I’m from Bineshi’s bloodline.
That’s Bill Baker if you don’t speak Ojibwemowin.
   Ni migizi dodem.

I’m from sitting on green boxes on
6-mile corner, watching cars go by.
Sometimes their four doors didn’t match.

I’m from Packer games on Sundays, Greyhound trips for the holidays, and Easter baskets with Karla.

I’m from women with the same last name and a father
   none of us knew.

I’m from the woods; northern.
Where pines and birch bark blanket
both bends of tribal roads,
   paved and gravel.

I’m from a single-parent household.
Michael Jackson cassette tapes, Purple Rain posters, and latchkey
   kids.
I’m from Title V programs. Commods on pantry shelves,
   cucumbers grown in

grandpa Jake’s garden, and a
   mean ol’ dog named Turkey.

I’m from “crying won’t change anything” and you
   “should’ve known better.”

I’m from where silence is normal and
   punitive.

Hugs are warm and forced Catholicism still
weighs heavy on my mother’s shoulders.
   At 73—the burden has lightened.

This is where I’ll always return.

In Closing

As Socrates is quoted as saying, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” Writing poetry is a remarkable tool to “mine the depths,” to examine inner and outer energies in one’s life, and to find the right shape for the right sensations of a poem.

Almost everyone is in some kind of prison, but most don’t know it. For incarcerated people—who know they are behind steel bars and razor wire—poetry can be the key to mental, psychic, and soul liberation. Our bodies, our living spaces, or the cement blocks of a prison, all are finite, like most anything in the material world. But the imagination—which accesses the eternal in the temporal, the dream in the real, the transcendent in the imminent—is wondrous and inexhaustible.

Poetry is one of the most significant ways to access that abundance in everyone, even in times, places, and circumstances bound by scarcity. While art and writing can create “masterpieces,” human beings are also works of art; all people are in a constantly evolving creative process. In the end, with poetry as practice, the real masterpiece is you.

On Fiction

Ryan Gattis

Lying to Tell the Truth: An Introduction to Fiction

Fiction is literature written in prose form—ordinary language without metrical structure—and is made up, in whole or in part, by its author. So, why write it? I write fiction because life is disappointing—chaotic, difficult, and confusing—and it frequently does not make sense. Fiction, on the other hand, needs to make sense. It must have a plot. One thing has to lead to another, and the story must have a purpose (a reason for its telling). Successful fiction—regardless of genre¹—convinces us. It draws us in, allowing readers to suspend their disbelief, so that we might care about made-up characters and scenarios.

Fiction can help us not only to make sense of the world but also to figure out what is important to us within it. Fiction is for struggling with the biggest questions we encounter as human beings: What is the point of existence? What is worth striving for? What is most important? “Fiction is lying,” as one of my teachers once put it, “in order to tell deeper truths about what it means to be human.”

Writers of fiction show us what they think is important about being human through the stories they tell. And when we read them, we inhabit the other lives of these characters. We see other choices, world views, and outcomes beyond our own. Reading fiction requires active imagination, and it is the closest we get to dreaming while awake.

This is how fiction connects us—not just author to reader, but it also creates community and culture through a set of shared stories. In its best instances, fiction can produce empathy in its readers. It can make readers feel for others who might be different from them and see things from new points of view. In this way, great fiction is like a pair of glasses: it changes not only how we see the world but also how we relate to it.

Fiction allows us access to unfiltered thought processes inside a character’s head in extraordinary detail. Why is that? In a word, narrative. Which simply means that fiction tells a story, and stories have invisible rules, the simplest of which is that it must have a beginning, middle, and end.

Of course, fiction doesn’t just allow us to progress deeply into human minds and varied experiences; it also allows us to visit any setting or era in history, or to do anything, really. It can take us outside ourselves, into new worlds, barreling into adventures when we are sitting still, but it can do something more as well: it can allow us to discover more about ourselves as we read.

To paraphrase Kafka, fiction is an ax that we can use to break up the ice inside ourselves.

Forms of Fiction

Primarily, the forms of fiction are defined by length. In practice, each narrative will ideally have a purpose that works best in that given size. However, if you don’t know this already, everything in fiction has an asterisk attached to it. There will always be an exception to a rule, whether in terms of length, style, structure, or perspective, so just think of this as a loose guide.

•Flash fiction: This form is extremely short and could simply be about capturing a moment, rather than having a beginning, middle, and end. In fact, the best flash fiction either seems to be about beginnings or endings and lasts no more than two pages. Its total length could be anywhere from one hundred words to seven hundred but is almost always less than one thousand (usually under three typed pages, single-spaced). When making the decision to write flash fiction, think of it like lighting a firecracker’s fuse. The story you need to tell has to lead to a bang (either a moment of action, a deep feeling, or a character’s quiet revelation), but it must come by the end of the piece.

•Short story: This form tends to condense its action into a single situation focused on a single character. This compression of narrative generally allows for deep characterization that can show the inner life and thought process of the central character, which can lead to the story feeling more realistic and relatable. Generally, it has a beginning, middle, and end, and it most often falls in the range of one thousand to five thousand words (usually between three and twenty typed pages).

•Novella: The textbook definition of a novella is that it is a story with a beginning, middle, and end under fifty thousand words (roughly 180–200 typed pages). However, most novellas are much shorter (in the 60- to 120-page range) and can be a continuous, longer form of the short story or be broken into chapters (like a novel) to aid the flow of reading. Its scope may be larger than the short story, accommodating multiple narrators or situations. Due to its length, it is often seen as an in-between art form, utilizing elements of both the short story and novel when necessary.

•Novel: The longest form of fiction, the novel, has a minimum word count of fifty thousand, though no defined maximum. It can incorporate multiple narrators, scenes, and even eras in time. It almost always relies on a structure broken into multiple chapters to tell its story. The general rule for breaking up chapters that I’ve always stuck with: when you change location (say, from inside a diner during a meal to a walk outside afterward) or jump in time (say, forward or backward a few hours), use a chapter break so it’s less confusing for the reader.

The rest of this chapter has been designed as a quick reference guide for you to dip in and dip out whenever you like. Not everything will speak to you right now, or even make complete sense, and that’s OK. Don’t worry about it. However, as you progress in your craft, other sections might become increasingly important as you keep writing. On this reading, and any other readings, take what you can use, what makes sense or sparks something for you, and leave the rest.

Write What You Know

The most common piece of writing advice in creative writing classrooms the world over is write what you know. But back when I first started writing, I didn’t realize it was holding me back. Like most students, I internalized it, and it made me believe that the only things I was allowed to write about were growing up in a military family in Colorado Springs while working in a grocery store. I strove for realism. And guess what? It was as horrible as it was unreadable. Why? Because it wasn’t what I was passionate about. The fact is, I’d always wanted to leave Colorado to find out if I could become a writer because I had no opportunities there.

What I’ve learned over time, of course, as I grow and continue to learn, is that it’s important not to limit yourself to writing only about your current situation or to totally making everything up. Imbue your fiction with a bit of what you know (specifically your research, your reading, and what you’re passionate about, as well as concrete details—but more on this later), and this bit can make all the difference. All writing is essentially about being human, so if you’re able to convey in a character something that makes you human, it can make all the difference in how engaging your writing is to read.

What’s more, fiction is a space where absolutely anything is possible: the dead can rise, aliens can land in Iowa, and time travel can be a button-push away. To take that limitless freedom and condense it down to only what you’ve experienced as a solitary human being on this earth seems to me to be a waste of the art form.

Infusing a bit of what you know, and most importantly are passionately knowledgeable about, changes everything. Characters breathe then. They care. They defend their views. They get into difficult situations by speaking their minds. Because these things power good writing: opinion, faith, and belief. But if what you’re writing is anchored in what you care deeply about, you can write anything you want and make it engaging.

On Theme

A theme is an idea that is explored throughout a work of fiction. This means it can recur, from scene to scene. Usually, of course, it is a complex idea, like love—something that has many aspects and ways of being explored over the course of a story. Think of your theme as a faceted gemstone. As you turn it in the light, you see different qualities of it, and you see its flaws as well.

This is essentially how theme works in literature: as it recurs throughout a longer work, like a novel, progressing scenes turn the idea over and examine it from different angles—ideally showing many different sides of the issue by the time you get to the end of the story. Ultimately, if a theme is successful, it not only pervades the story (and helps hold the narrative together), but the work also has something meaningful to say about these core ideas in the first place. Whether love, revenge, or the importance of chasing one’s dreams, the best themes always seem to prompt questions that our fiction must answer, questions like, Why is this theme so important to us as humans? What are its drawbacks or difficulties? What are its enduring qualities?

Without getting too technical, the general rule of thumb is that theme must evolve. For example, in a short story, it might be explored with one character thinking he knows what the cost of vengeance will be, only to have that idea reversed through experience by the end. Or, in a novel, perhaps the stage is set with an opening chapter that details a fight at a holiday dinner; by the end, the players have reunited, and along the way, they have rediscovered the value of family. As the work progresses, it would ideally reveal the facets and flaws of its themes along the way by making certain that the characters feel the results of both and change as a result. This is crucial.

With all this said, I have some advice: please don’t worry too much about it. If you write only with theme in mind, you risk losing the story and the characters. In my experience, if you feel driven to share a human story with genuine conflict, theme usually emerges from the relationships between characters and the circumstances they find themselves navigating—which is to say, when external difficulties impact the characters and force them to change (whether through love, anger, or something else), themes usually find their way into the work organically.

So, this is simply a way of saying it’s OK to figure it out as you go. Certainly it’s important to always keep your core idea in mind (whether honor, truth, or duty), but don’t push too hard. At least not in the first draft. Speaking of which . . .

About First Drafts

The most valuable advice I’ve ever been given is this: try not to edit while you’re composing. When doing a rough draft of a chapter or short story, try to go all the way through to the end, fueled by passion and a need to get that story on the page. Just write. Figure out if the order is right later. The reason being that composition and editing occupy two different parts of your brain: composition is full-blooded creation; editing is ordering and trimming for maximum effect. Trying to do both at the same time can often shut down anything I’m working on.

How do I deal with it? During composition, I fight the urge to go back if a word doesn’t feel right. (It does get easier over time if you make it a habit; I often have to tell myself, Now isn’t the time to be critical; now is the time to create) I plow on ahead, searching for the spirit of the thing, as opposed to the perfect words, and I trust myself to put the time in later to shape it. Some strange and wonderful things can happen in that process, however. So long as those words come from that deep well of story inside you, I think you’ll be surprised how many end up being usable in the end.

On Editing

The most important question you can ask yourself during editing is, Does this sentence have a purpose? It’s a tough one, but it has always served me well. When I focus on purpose—whether in revealing character, plot, or atmosphere in a piece—the riffs tend to announce themselves. I can see where I explored tangents or had a character go on too much about ’90s hip-hop.

Again and again, I must ask, Is this chunk of text or bit of dialogue moving the story forward? Does it reveal some new information about character, atmosphere, or scene? If so, good, because this constant revealing of purpose is not only how you keep your readers’ attention, but it’s also how you get them to trust you as a storyteller, to simply relax and go with what you’re describing.

Lastly, nothing, and I mean nothing, is a better guide for how to edit than close reading of the work of published authors. (For further thoughts on editing, a guide on how to read like a writer, as well as a few writing and editing guidelines, can be found at the end of this chapter.)

Writing Every Day You Can

If you can, do. If you can’t, don’t beat yourself up about it. But I can say this: few things accelerate growth like daily practice. You’ll find rhythm more easily. And you’ll learn your own roadblocks and difficulties and how to avoid them. But what I most want to share about writing every day is this: I have good days writing novels where everything flows, and terrible days where I have to claw for every word. And you know what the best part is? When I’m done with a first draft, I genuinely cannot remember which days were fun and easy and which were like pulling teeth. So long as it was purposeful, the writing never shows that struggle or elation. And that’s one of the secrets of the craft of writing, I think. Good, bad, or indifferent, just keep going. You’ll get better. Guaranteed.

On Finishing

Always finish what you’re working on. If you finish, you’ll improve. You’ll learn from the composition process as well as structuring it. But if you leave a lot of things half finished, without endings or beginnings, you’ll never be able to accumulate that knowledge and move forward in your craft. After all, threads have to be turned into sweaters before you can figure out how to knit better versions or broader styles. Nobody ever got better at weaving by staring at a bunch of unfinished piles of yarn.

The Five Essentials of Storytelling: Building Blocks for Your Fiction

How does effective fiction really grab us? What techniques get us to buy into the world on the page and lose all sense of time while we’re reading? These are vital questions to any writer. This section is not intended as the final answer on these topics, but the hope here is that these five essentials can help you better plan for reader engagement, because that greatly increases the likelihood that readers will actually read your work until the very end. Think of this section as a foundation that you can use to build many future stories that can work regardless of genre or subject matter.

The Five Essentials:

1.Hooks

2.The Unexpected

3.Cause and Effect

4.How Does It Feel?

5.Concrete, Specific Detail

Hooks

Hooks grab the attention of the reader through curiosity. They catch us and keep us because we want to know what comes next. The strongest ones often prompt questions, making us wonder how or why, as opposed to what. Often hooks open a story, but the very best stories employ hooks throughout—for example, novels can use them at the end of chapters to keep propelling you forward in the narrative. Be warned, though: Hooks are promises. They must be paid off in your own writing. Here’s an example of a first line with a hook in it:

Foley had never seen a prison where you could walk right up to the fence without getting shot.

—Elmore Leonard, Out of Sight

Here, Leonard introduces a character (Foley), a setting (prison), and stakes (getting shot) immediately. This creates questions, too. How would Foley know that, unless he had some experience with prisons? If that’s true, is his experience from the inside? If so, what did he do? This introduction of setting-as-obstacle also sets up a potential conflict: If Foley is inside, and is incarcerated, will he be breaking out? If so, how?

Hooks in fiction trigger internal questioning—our human need to figure things out—and the best hooks guide that process rather than fight it. Here’s another example, this time from a short story:

Kyra was a transparent liar.

—Elizabeth Tallent, “Faux Pas”

Hooks make promises, and here we have a first line working in tandem with the title to draw us in. Will Kyra’s inability to lie well lead to a big mistake? We must read on to find out, but certainly as we read we will want to see this proven: in short, we must see her lying, and the result of it, to be satisfied. Hooks catch our attention and compel us to read on. They are perhaps the most basic story element but can often be combined with the second essential, the unexpected.

The Unexpected

It is the curveball of storytelling precisely because it confounds your reader’s expectations. It does that through the use of irony or non sequitur.

Let’s tackle irony first. In this case, irony is something that is contrary to (and potentially the opposite of) what the reader is expecting.

In the story “A Human Number” in Curtis Dawkins’s The Graybar Hotel, a prisoner’s cellmate has asked a number of times to be moved out of the shared cell and into the medical facility. For a number of pages, the character named Peanut has gone to great lengths “malingering with intent” to prove to the guards that he is sick, so that he might secure the move, and in this paragraph, he seems to have finally succeeded:

I sat at the table watching. You never know when you might need malingering skills, and if Peanut was only malingering, he was really good at it. I was an understudy apprenticed to a master. They wheeled him away, leaving a quarter-sized puddle of shiny drool on the floor, which I swept away with a swipe of my flip-flop. Before the streak was completely dry, Peanut walked in again.

The irony here is that after Peanut had finally been collected by the staff and “wheeled away”—succeeding in what he wished for—he would just walk back in some minutes later, as if nothing happened. This moment serves as a dose of the unexpected because it is contrary to both the narrator’s and readers’ expectations.

The concept of mystery falls into the category of the unexpected, too: that wondering of what will happen and how, of who did what, and of why. But mystery can present itself in any genre or story in order to push the narrative forward. These plot twists are the opposite of cheap surprises, as the best ones require careful setup (foreshadowing or threading) by the writer, with well-placed details that seem innocuous in context, only for them to acquire greater meaning throughout the piece, or even in that all-important moment of a final reveal.

This brings us to the non sequitur. It means, literally, “does not follow,” which is to suggest it does not follow within the logical order of a series, argument, or statement. This can be utilized in fiction as a surprise from out of nowhere (that is, a moment that is not immediately plot motivated or situationally motivated), one that disrupts a scene like a rock breaking a window at a dinner party, making the audience shout, “What the heck? How did that happen?”

Most frequently, it is employed as a sharp surprise to refocus audience attention. Often, these moments have no immediate explanation, though the narrative should eventually provide one—for example, the spurned lover character (who had yet to be introduced) threw the rock through the window—as it must be tied together to be ultimately satisfying. The non sequitur is not the most polished of the storytelling essentials, but it grabs attention, even if for only a moment. The key, of course, where any fictional world-building is concerned, is to keep your reader’s attention and mold it into caring.

Now then, I made you a promise at the end of the hooks section (the very last sentence of the section, actually), and it’s time to pay it off, because hooks have to be paid off in order to convince your audience you know what you’re doing. I said previously that hooks can be combined with the unexpected, so it’s time to prove it.

Here’s the first line of the novel Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides:

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.

Why does it work as a hook? Because we’re forced to engage with questions of how and why. Why does it work as the unexpected? Because it confounds expectations of birth and sex. This novel ends up paying off these hows and whys the very same way any good work of fiction ever does: dramatization spiked with heavy doses of cause and effect.

Cause and Effect

In a story, cause and effect describes the process whereby something happens (A), triggering consequences (B), which lead to further events and repercussions (C, D, and so on) within a chain of occurrence that forms the core action of the piece.

This is all a way of saying that one thing needs to lead to another, pushing the story forward dynamically while maintaining reader interest and attention. Let’s look at an example from Ross Macdonald’s The Galton Case:

“Is he back in Reno? I’m trying to locate him.”

Culotti picked at his nose and looked wise, in a startled way. He smiled expansively, and put a fatherly arm around my back. “Come in, we’ll talk.”

He propelled me toward the door. Hissing sounds came from the shed, and the sweet anesthetic odor of sprayed paint. Culotti opened the door and stepped back. A goggled man with a paint-gun turned from his work on a blue car.

I was trying to recognize him, when Culotti’s shoulder caught me like a truck bumper in the small of my back. I staggered toward the goggled man. The paint-gun hissed in his hands.

A blue cloud stung my eyes. In the burning blue darkness, I recalled that the room clerk Farnsworth hadn’t asked me for more money. Then I felt the sap’s soft explosion on the back of my head. I glissaded down slopes of blue pain to a hole which opened for me.

What happens here? Let’s break it down to its barest plot bones: the narrator asks a question (A); gets no initial response (B); that is, until a “fatherly arm” is placed on the narrator’s back (C); which propels the narrator toward a door (D) where someone is painting; the painter turns at the sound or movement (E), distracting the narrator long enough for Culotti to barrel into the back of him (F); which the painter takes as a sign to attack with spray paint to the narrator’s eyes (G); which disables the narrator long enough for him to be hit with a sap on the back of the head (H) and ends the scene.

This progression from A to H is a “chain of occurrence” as mentioned above. It is a really good way of thinking about a plot that goes somewhere, with things to accomplish. And yet, this process of things happening (one thing leading to another) is not always what’s most important.

What’s potentially more important is the word and between cause and effect at the top of this very section. But why is that? The and is the most important part of cause and effect for one reason and one reason only: human processing.

But what does that mean? It means that after cause (A) creates an effect (B) for a character, there must be some definable human processing that takes place within them—some assessment of the current situation as well as the physical or emotional toll before making a (hopefully now understandable) decision to act again (C). So, what does that look like? Let’s check out the above example again, but with elements of human processing underlined:

“Is he back in Reno? I’m trying to locate him.”

Culotti picked at his nose and looked wise, in a startled way. He smiled expansively, and put a fatherly arm around my back. “Come in, we’ll talk.”

He propelled me toward the door. Hissing sounds came from the shed, and the sweet anesthetic odor of sprayed paint. Culotti opened the door and stepped back. A goggled man with a paint-gun turned from his work on a blue car.

I was trying to recognize him, when Culotti’s shoulder caught me like a truck bumper in the small of my back. I staggered toward the goggled man. The paint-gun hissed in his hands.

A blue cloud stung my eyes. In the burning blue darkness, I recalled that the room clerk Farnsworth hadn’t asked me for more money. Then I felt the sap’s soft explosion on the back of my head. I glissaded down slopes of blue pain to a hole which opened for me.

Prose, fiction in particular, provides the opportunity to be inside a character’s head, to get the sense of how their brain works, how they respond to given situations and act accordingly. Without convincing human processing that shows us an understandable thought process occurring step by step with events (whether rationally or irrationally), we cannot be immersed in—and convinced by—the world this character inhabits. We need something else too, though. We need to know how it feels to be in this world; we need to empathetically feel affected by decisions for good or ill. Which brings us to the fourth section....

How Does It Feel?

How does it feel, or perhaps more specifically: How does it feel to this character in this moment, given his or her background and experiences? Certainly, the ensuing adrenaline rush of a fistfight would feel very different to a Navy SEAL than to a teenager with a congenital heart condition. Relaying a character’s physical and emotional state is a basic skill, but you’d be amazed how frequently writers fail to tell us how a given situation feels to a character. And yet, I can tell you that after nearly a decade of reading student writing, this single element is the number one difference between published and unpublished writing.

Even the very bad published books manage to convey what a given situation feels like to a given character; they just don’t do it very well— it ends up cheesy, hackneyed, or imprecise—but they do it, and that’s important. As readers, if we know how it feels to this fictional character, and more importantly, how it impacts the character, we can care; we can relate. In short, this character becomes much less fictional and much more real—a fictional person who lives and breathes in our imaginations. If we don’t know these things, we can’t care. It’s that simple.

Let’s look at our example of cause and effect again, the excerpt from Ross Macdonald’s The Galton Case, but this time let’s look at it as a mixture of cause, human processing (underlined), effect, and how does it feel? (italicized).

“Is he back in Reno? I’m trying to locate him.”

Culotti picked at his nose and looked wise, in a startled way. He smiled expansively, and put a fatherly arm around my back. “Come in, we’ll talk.”

He propelled me toward the door. Hissing sounds came from the shed, and the sweet anesthetic odor of sprayed paint. Culotti opened the door and stepped back. A goggled man with a paint-gun turned from his work on a blue car.

I was trying to recognize him, when Culotti’s shoulder caught me like a truck bumper in the small of my back. I staggered toward the goggled man. The paint-gun hissed in his hands.

A blue cloud stung my eyes. In the burning blue darkness, I recalled that the room clerk Farnsworth hadn’t asked me for more money. Then I felt the sap’s soft explosion on the back of my head. I glissaded down slopes of blue pain to a hole which opened for me.

The underlined human processing here is the main character trying to piece the surprise exchange together, whereas the italicized examples of how does it feel? give readers a clear sense of how the character feels in this particularly difficult situation. This brings us to our final element.

Concrete, Specific Detail

Details are the lifeblood of fiction. In case you’re wondering, this includes sensory detail: how things smell, taste, feel (emotionally and physically), and sound. Quite simply, details are the glue of the fictional world. They hold everything together. Well-chosen details determine whether or not your fictional world holds up to scrutiny.

When I say concrete, I mean something that passes the gut test: it feels solid; it feels acutely observed, real even. In film, television, and video games, detail can come in the form of mise-en-scène (which is just a fancy way of saying what you can see on the screen): set dressing, backgrounds, music, or even acting. In prose, however, all you have is your words, and word choice becomes of the utmost importance. As such, details that work create pictures in the mind’s eye. They guide your readers to create their own images from your words. Let’s start with an example:

I sat on the lidless toilet at the rear of the cell, shining the hideous, bulb-toed shoes that were issued to those being released.

—Edward Bunker, No Beast So Fierce

For me, “lidless toilet” and “bulb-toed shoes” jump out as useful details immediately. Why? Because they help me visualize the scene, which leads to perhaps the most important thing to know about details: when they work, they create pictures in the mind’s eye.

Now, let’s try the above passage without the adjectives “lidless” and “bulb-toed”: “I sat on the toilet at the rear of the cell, shining the hideous shoes that were issued to those being released.”

Why is it less strong? For one, bulb-toed is specific; it conjures an image of a certain type of shoe. Hideous, on the other hand, can mean many different things to many different readers. Although it has a negative connotation, it is also ambiguous and open to interpretation. Without bulb-toed accompanying it, hideous can become simply a matter of personal taste, and the reader will create their own, highly personal image.

How is it possible to know which details might work best in your own fiction? Well, the fiction I tend to write is oral in nature, which means it is captured—and is driven by—the voices of the characters. Within my process, the best way to test what details work is to actually tell stories out loud to other people.²

Whether it is one person or twenty, I watch my audience to see when details land with them: a wince if it’s a grisly detail, or a laugh if it’s a humorous one. In my experience, no school on earth is better than personal storytelling. Nothing else will give you more immediate insight as you develop your technique, because if a story works in person, chances are it is far more likely to work on the page. Let’s look at one more example in regard to detail and movement:

There is a very funny mark on this wall, low down, near the mop-board. A streak that runs through the room. It goes behind every piece of furniture, except the bed, a long, straight, even smooch, as if it had been rubbed over and over.

—Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”

What is worth studying here is how Gilman guides the reader’s eye around this room, detail by detail: our attention is initially pushed to the wall, and then the floor (“low down”)—incidentally, mopboard is a beautifully specific word and makes much sense in wallpapered rooms where wetness might adversely affect the paper; she then evolves the image, letting us know it isn’t simply a “mark” but a streak—so, not simply a dot, but a line, with movement, and it “runs” through the room; yet, it is on more than one wall, it “goes behind every piece of furniture” before the author hits us with the final image: a “smooch,” which is not just a line, but a fuzzy line, one that has been “rubbed over and over.”

Read the passage once more. Pay attention to how you visualize this short sequence, step by step, in your head. It holds up to scrutiny, doesn’t it? This is what highly effective writing accomplishes: it not only allows us to focus, but with clear guidance, it also moves us through an imaginary world in a way that feels natural, no matter what is being described.

Where prose is concerned, concrete, specific detail is the backbone of world-building, because it allows you to guide readers to create images in their heads. As such, when it comes to detail, it isn’t how much you use, but how and where you use it. So be strategic. Find the right ones and polish them, rather than overwhelming readers with too many. Remember: The best details create pictures in the mind’s eye.

One last note: It’s best to strive for clarity and precision. You can’t guide everything in a reader’s experience, but you can be purposeful and specific rather than vague. Ten times out of ten, your audience will see more there than when they have to provide details themselves.

While I’m at it: One last note about readers. They want to get it! Nobody cracks a book or a story wanting to be confused. They want to understand. They want to connect. Oftentimes, even if the writing isn’t good enough, they blame themselves. Making sure your work is understood on the literal level is the first step in creating that connection with them.

How to Read Like a Writer

Note: all examples in this section are from Raymond Chandler’s novel The Lady in the Lake.³

The most important step toward becoming a sound writer is reading—not reading a great quantity of material, but reading deeply (ideally work that genuinely inspires you, regardless of genre), with an eye for the techniques and authorial choices that make a story exemplary.

To accomplish such a thing, you must read actively, with a pen, and what that means is that you must take notes on the text as you are reading. You must break from the text when you find something noteworthy and immediately write it down so that you don’t forget your initial reaction. But what exactly should you be on the lookout for? Where do you even begin? Let’s start with a short template.

Fictional Element

Suggested Notational Abbreviation

Atmosphere

Atmos.

Character

Char.

Detail

Det.

Dialogue

Dia.

Gesture

Gest.

Plot

Pl.

Setting

Set

Telling Simile

TS

Usage

U

Word Choice

WC

Questioning

Q

Atmosphere (Atmos.)

Atmosphere in fiction relates to those sections of a piece that are specifically dedicated to what it feels like to be in a given setting. These details are primarily sensory and give the reader a sense of how a place smells, feels, sounds, or tastes. Setting and atmosphere often work in tandem to evoke the most complete world possible.

•Examples: “San Bernardino baked and shimmered in the afternoon heat. The air was hot enough to blister my tongue” (19); “The draft smelled of hot iron” (53); “In the silence time passed in the dry whirr of the electric clock on the mantel, in the far-off toot of an auto horn on Aster Drive, in the hornet drone of a plane over the foothills across the canyon, in the sudden lurch and growl of the electric refrigerator in the kitchen” (61–62).

•Note: The most important questions to ask yourself when reading carefully are, Why is the author choosing to do this? And, to what purpose? In the examples above, the point is to evoke a place. How does it sound? “Dry whir,” “far-off toot,” “hornet drone.” These details aid the reader in imagining how it feels to be there. How does it feel? Hot enough to “blister my tongue.” How does it smell? Like “hot iron.” Senses are key here in enhancing reader immersion and overall experience.

Character (Char.)

A character is a person represented in fiction, but this particular notation refers to how a character is described, and also the things a certain character says or does (or even refrains from doing) that allow us to form a clear picture of the role they play in the story. There can be considerable overlap in regard to gesture, action, detail, and dialogue. All of these can evince character well and must be considered in total when trying to get to the bottom of any fictional individual.

•Examples: “I sat with my drink untouched in my hand. I like to drink, but not when people are using me for a diary” (23); “He had large ears and friendly eyes and his jaws munched slowly and he looked as dangerous as a squirrel and much less nervous” (30).

•Note: Character-specific details deepen the reader’s ability to interpret these characters and their motivations; in fact, the more we understand why they do what they do (not drinking, so as to avoid being used “for a diary”), or how they judge the world (“he looked as dangerous as a squirrel”), the more we will get out of the story.

Detail (Det.)

If statements are the hypotheses in any work of fiction, then details are certainly the proof that makes them feel either true, or untrue, to a reader. It isn’t enough for a work of fiction to trot out statement after statement and rely on the reader to regard them as true. The writer must, at some point, show these statements to be true; in short, the writer must support these statements with details. Perhaps no other element in fiction is more responsible for powering a reader’s suspension of disbelief. In the following example, the parenthetical comments are mine.

•Example: “He looked at me with steady blue eyes and I looked at him. In spite of his weathered appearance he looked like a drinker (factual statement). He had the thickened and glossy skin, the too noticeable veins, the bright glitter in the eyes” (factual statement proved) (21).

Dialogue (Dia.)

Characters can reveal as much about their backgrounds, education, and personal viewpoint through dialogue as by any other means. It is never merely words: dialogue is a tool that humans use to get what they want. When reading, be on the lookout for strong examples of tone, word choice, and rhythm. Mark them down and study them to see what they can teach you about voice in fiction. Analyze the example below. Hint: What does it indicate about its speaker?

•Example: “County don’t allow me no money for emergency liquor, so I just have to seize a little here and there. Don’t use it myself. Never could understand folks letting theirselves get gummed up with it” (31).

Gesture (Gest.)

A gesture is a movement that expresses meaning and is an excellent tool of characterization in strong fiction; it helps reinforce verisimilitude— the appearance of being true or real. In short, how someone does something helps tell us who they are, and the more acutely observed an action is, the more real the fiction feels to the reader.

•Examples: “He limped as he walked, giving his right leg a little kick out with each step and swinging the foot in a shallow arc” (20); “His face tightened up like a charley horse. His fists went into hard lumps on his thighs” (73).

Plot (Pl.)

Plot is reserved for the main details of cause and effect that seem most relevant to the story of the piece, how it will proceed, and where it will end up.

•Example: “‘One, that she will be murdered by some unknown party who fixed things up to implicate Bill when and if the murder was discovered. Two, that Muriel did actually commit suicide, but fixed things so that he would be blamed. A revenge suicide’” (46).

•Note: One of the reasons why I chose a crime book as an example is because, with its twists, turns, and red herrings (a clue intended to mislead the reader), it most easily illustrates this point of plot because it has a mystery at its heart. Obviously, not all literary fiction offers such straightforward uses; that’s why it’s up to you to be on your toes as a reader. Read into details. Try to figure out which might be foreshadowing plot action or character development— for example, a character is shown to be a distracted driver (flicking with the radio, staring at pedestrians and not the road) early on in a story; later, the character causes a crash. When you can anticipate these story shifts, you’re that much closer to writing your own.

Setting (Set.)

Setting comprises the surroundings where a scene takes place—how it looks. Always be on the lookout for how an author uses prepositions in these instances.⁴ Prepositions are necessary and useful ordering devices that help the reader form a mental picture of a setting by establishing a sense of where these chunks of setting are in relation to one another.

•Examples: “The door was narrow, grilled and topped with a lancet arch. Below the grill there was an iron knocker” (10); “A spittoon big enough to coil a hose in was leaning against the man’s right leg” (30); “The cabin was larger than it had seemed from the outside. It contained a few articles of modest furniture, a rag rug on the pineboard floor, a round table against the end wall and two chairs set against it. Through the open door the corner of a big black cookstove showed” (44).

•Note: When considering setting in your work, make sure that what you describe is used at some point in the piece—so, if you describe a spittoon in one paragraph, it is a good rule to keep in mind that someone must spit in it or knock it over later. It needs to be there for a reason, not simply to create a spatial image for the characters to walk around in, but as something that can be interacted with—something that can potentially lend itself to action, gesture, character, or even plot.

Telling Simile (TS)

Of course, a simile is a comparison between dissimilar things in order to add emphasis or vividness to the prose, but a telling simile takes it one step farther: such similes actually tell us something of the person or thing they are describing. In short, they add meaning—particularly when used to describe a character. Be on the lookout for these, and the additional layer of meaning they add to a text. They are often one of the hallmarks of an author’s style.

•Examples: “The roar of his laughter was like a tractor backfiring” (21), “I breathed with my mouth open, as silent as a burglar behind a curtain” (23); “Clamping bobbie pins into fat blondes had given her a grip like a pair of iceman’s tongs” (38).

Tractor: this character is perhaps similarly big, slow, powerful, and not quite right.

Burglar: the narrator characterizes himself as being as quiet as a thief, intent not to disturb, but also perhaps hoping to steal something from this exchange.

Tongs: this example characterizes her as sturdy, powerful, and cold (perhaps emotionally as well).

Usage (U)

How good is your ear? You can always improve your sensitivity to language by being on the lookout for colorful, striking, or even unexpected word usages or phrasings throughout a text. Over time, as you note what speaks to you, you will not only improve your vocabulary but also sharpen your sense of which usages work in given situations, which do not, and when to try it yourself in a given piece.

•Examples: “‘You’re slipping your clutch,’ I told him. ‘I didn’t come up here to enquire into your love life’” (22); “What Muriel did was all silk with me” (35); “He asked me in a three-highball voice” (41).

Word Choice (WC)

Nothing is more important in fiction than the specific words the author chooses to convey the tale. Whether it is the repeated use of a specific word (for example, smooch in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”) or the commonplace-but-precise language employed by Raymond Chandler throughout his work— the words you choose ultimately determine the tone and strength of the piece. They can foreshadow, characterize, or even terrorize, and nearly always, word choice can lead the reader to another layer of interpretation and deepen the piece.

•Example: “He pointed hard at the redwood cabin across the lake. It was turning the color of oxblood in the late afternoon light” (23).

Questioning (Q)

Lastly, and perhaps most crucially, always note your questions as you go through a text. This will show you how the story has been laid out to prompt questions from you, and then answer them later, whether through plot or character or some other means. All good stories rely on this interplay of plant/payoff. On further readings, it will also show your initial journey through the piece—what you caught, and also what you missed.

Writing and Editing Guidelines

Remember, take what you can use from these guidelines, and leave the rest.

Guard against redundancy and repetition by focusing on word choice. Use synonyms if you must. Whether in crosswords or in word finds, humans innately recognize patterns. Fail to abide by this guideline and risk throwing the audience out of your story. Few things shatter reader confidence more than the same key word used six times in two paragraphs. One wonders if you are indeed in control of the story then.

Be ruthless in the pursuit of descriptive and emotional clarity. Pursue concrete, specific details in your work when seeking to guide your readers through the worlds you create.

Eliminate useless words. Avoid unnecessary description, especially with adjectives and adverbs. Rather than crystallizing images, overuse renders these descriptors ineffectual. Focus on strong nouns and verbs. Compare: (1) “She moved glidingly over the cold ice” with (2) “She glided over the ice.” The difference between 1 and 2 is the adverb glidingly was changed to its verb form and replaced the nondescriptive moved, while the adjective cold was omitted because ice already implies it.

Vary your sentences. Do not hesitate to play with length, structure, conjunctions, punctuation, and clauses, but do stick to discernible grammatical rules. Together they create a rhythm for the work, a flow that does the heavy lifting in a piece. This is essential to keeping your audience’s brains engaged and alert. Useful tip: circle the first word of each sentence; if there is a lot of repetition, you need to vary your sentences.

Always and without fail, read your work aloud. Missing punctuation announces itself. Awkward sentence structure jumps off the page. When it comes to rhythm, the ear is better than the eye.

With practice, each of these guidelines can help push you closer to the writer’s promised land: your reader’s total suspension of disbelief. When you achieve this, you can very literally do anything you can dream of on the page.

That does it for the fiction chapter of this book. Remember: take what you find useful to your own work, and leave the rest. Now, get reading, and get writing!

1Genre (noun): “a category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter.”
   In the case of fiction, these genres can include crime and mystery, horror, thriller, science fiction, fantasy, and romance. Each has its own conventions, or requirements, that need to be fulfilled in order to be considered part of that genre—for example, utilizing robots, space travel, or time travel categorizes a piece as science fiction.

2The practice of telling stories aloud is extremely useful for writers, and I highly recommend practicing it—not just for detail, but also for learning story structure and rhythm. When are you adding unnecessary details? When are you moving too fast and confusing readers? When are you going too far on a tangent? It’s tough to know these things for certain while writing by yourself, but if you are reading aloud directly in front of someone, it is much easier. If you can watch your listeners while telling a story, they will show you when they’re bored, and by that same token they will also show you when they’re eager to hear more. I often counsel would-be writers to tell as many stories aloud as possible. These are your opportunities to practice on an audience and predict how they will react. This will make you so much better when you sit down to put it on the page.

3Raymond Chandler, The Lady in the Lake, Fifty Classics of Crime Fiction, 1900–1950 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1976).

4Preposition (noun): “a word governing, and usually preceding, a noun or pronoun and expressing a relation to another word or element in the clause, as in ‘the man on the platform,’ ‘she arrived after dinner,’ ‘what did you do it for?’“ (The New Oxford American Dictionary, [2001], s.v. “preposition”)

On Nonfiction Memoir

Patrick O’Neil

How I Began Writing

I got busted for armed robbery in 1997. I was strung out, physically destroyed, and looking at doing twenty-five to life on a possible three-strikes case. While awaiting trial in county jail, I was confined to a cell for twenty-three hours a day with a serial killer for a cellie. After a few months, I’d do anything to get out of that five-by-ten-foot cell.

In San Francisco, at least back in the ’90s, they offered adult education classes, and one of them was creative writing. In county, there weren’t a whole lot of options for creative self-expression. I had always been a storyteller as a visual artist and then a musician, so it wasn’t that far-fetched to try my hand at writing. Only I’d been a junkie for eighteen years and so caught up in my addiction that I hadn’t read a book or scribbled even a short sentence in longer than I wanted to admit. I was practically illiterate. Yet boredom and adversity breed creativity—at least for me they did—and I started journaling long diatribes against “the man” for keeping me down and writing short nonfiction “stories” about the dope fiends I’d run with and the crimes I had pulled.

To better my vocabulary I started reading as many books as I could get my hands on. At first reading was difficult, but over time I fell into a natural rhythm, inhaling literature like I used drugs. I read Edward Bunker’s Education of a Felon, and knew I could write like that. I read George Jackson’s Blood in My Eye and wished that I could write like that. I’d try to read crap like Dean Koontz and end up throwing the paperback across the cell.

But I read a book a day, and when I was eventually convicted and sent to prison, I kept writing. When I hit the mainline, I joined a creative writing group. Every week I’d share my work with this group of men and get nods of approval. My “stories” began to evolve into longer pieces of memoir, and I started thinking of myself as a writer.

One gray overcast day out on the yard, a giant thug, his skin covered in swastikas, sidled up to me and handed me this book, saying, “Ya gotta read this, bro.” At first I was just really stoked he didn’t shank me, but then I realized he was another writer from the group, and I had always admired his ability to get absolutely vulnerable with his prose. When I read the book, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, it changed my perspective. She gave me the courage and permission to make mistakes, write shitty first drafts, and learn from the craft of other writers. Bird by Bird not only made me want to be a better writer, but it also made me know I was going to be one.

I tell that story at my workshops and nonfiction writing courses. Sometimes I get adverse reactions—as students had no idea I’d done time and are either afraid or judgmental or think I’m joking. Other times, like when I gave a talk on writing for the Creative Writing Guild at the California Medical Facility state prison in Vacaville, California, the room erupted in understanding laughter. You never know exactly what your audience’s reaction will be, and this pertains to your writing as well.

You Are the Expert of Your Own Experience

The word memoir comes from the French word mémoire, meaning “memory.” Traditionally, memoir is a narrative about your personal experience, a specific event that happened to you, a detailed aspect of your life, a particular time period in your life, or the impact of an outside event. Which is to say, memoir is the real deal. You are not making stuff up. You are telling the “story”—your personal history—as you believe it to be true. You are the source and the expert on the subject—all the facts and information will be gleaned from your memories.

Most memoirs are written in first-person point of view, where the author describes their experience using the personal pronoun “I.” Writing in first person creates a sense of intimacy. We tend to think of intimacy as the closeness shared between people in a romantic relationship, but if you consider that you’re allowing the reader to engage in your experience as if they were there with you, and sometimes as if they were you, then that’s about as intimate as you can get.

Intimacy is achieved when the author openly and honestly tells their story with a vulnerability that exposes their inner thoughts and emotions. Which probably goes against everything you have ever been taught—what we do to survive in our environment has served us well. However, being guarded and vague does nothing for your writing, and your reader will not be emotionally invested in your story if you do not trust them enough to let them in.

Vulnerability is at the core of this moving excerpt from Christina MacNaughton’s “Just Another Death” (awarded first place for memoir in the 2007 PEN Prison Writing Contest), where she learns of a friend’s suicide:

The linoleum floor ripples out in front of me and hot, salty pressure throbs behind my eyes, a warning that I’ve got about seven seconds to hightail it out of here before I’m guilty of a jail misdemeanor—Crying in Public.

Crying in Public is considered a nasty little transgression in prison. Don’t get me wrong—there are indeed women who Cry in Public, some of them daily. But it is a well known fact that tears come with a purpose: sympathy from inmates or staff, handouts, favors, a way to sidestep disciplines, or to avoid the wrath of someone they’ve undoubtedly screwed over. But in a world of Professional Con Artists, Public Criers are considered obvious, small-time manipulators, their scamming pathetic, even gaudy. This belief is so steadfast that any tears, no matter how genuine, are automatically suspect, subject to jokes, sneers, eye-rolling, and out and out insults. To not be perceived as a Public Crier, true grief and pain must be hidden and unleashed only in total seclusion, usually within the confines of one’s own cell or shower stall. So far away from my housing unit, I bolt to the nearest bathroom.

By allowing herself to be vulnerable, MacNaughton trusts the reader, giving them access to her emotional internal struggle and ultimately showing them who she really is. Crying is the transgression she is guilty of, but her honesty results in reader empathy.

Make It Literary: A Note on Creative Nonfiction

We have all probably read memoirs where the author just told their story with as much emotion as a police report—“just the facts, ma’am, just the facts”—and didn’t really take into consideration the reader’s experience. While those books might have their place in historical nonfiction, one of the main goals of memoir is to write a compelling story that not only provides the reader with an enriching experience but also speaks to them through the quality of your prose as well— and this is where the term creative nonfiction memoir comes in.

Creative nonfiction memoir is a mixture of literary concepts, techniques, and craft that leverages the same techniques from fiction in order to make nonfiction as absorbing as novels. These include elements such as voice, plot, dialogue, imagery, conflict, style, and a compelling protagonist. Without these elements, our writing doesn’t sing, and the reader loses interest.

Now, this doesn’t mean you have to use “flowery,” overly descriptive writing or get too bogged down in details. But what it does entail are the kinds of observations and details that William Myrl Smither-man creates in this excerpt from his “Where the Wild Things Are” essay, awarded first place for memoir in the 2019 PEN Prison Writing Contest:

The psychiatrist comports himself as a genial mantis, his long limbs snapping out to snare fresh friends for our secret and secretive community. He teaches at a university, has consulted with the FBI, and is nothing if not overqualified to be meddling in a correctional institution. His shoes are well maintained.

Our group meets in an abandoned classroom in J-building. The tables are pulled into an ugly diamond where 10 offenders gather, sometimes more or less, along with the head nurse and the doctor. Established as a “medication clinic” under the aegis of the drug company that supplies the prison, it is the first and only such group in Virginia. Its existence rests solely on the workaholism of our psychiatrist, who willed it into being.

“You may have noticed we have someone new with us today. Mr. Tamil, you have a background that is unlike any I have seen, and I’ve been doing this a long time. In here, there are some unwritten rules: What is said here stays in the group, there is no disrespect, and you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to. Would you like to share with the group some of your story?”

Tamil was sitting at the opposing corner of the diamond. Dark-skinned and attenuated, his head was drastically torqued to one side. He could look forward but only momentarily, all the while appearing to struggle with an invisible and pitiless angel wrestling his head to the left.

Smitherman has created a dynamic and descriptive narrative. Through his imagery, the reader can clearly see his characters. By further fleshing out the scene with setting and dialogue, he completes the picture, and his creative nonfiction memoir reads like well-written fiction.

Your Memories Are Your Story: Getting Started

A lot of writers stress out over structure, voice, syntax, and grammar, and they fail to simply get the words down on paper. If you are looking for a place to start, then start with whatever memory stands out the most—good or bad. As writers, we are emotionally invested in these memories. And the emotions that are attached are the details that will draw the reader in.

Keep in mind that you want your beginning to grip the reader’s attention. Unfortunately, readers get impatient. When there is too much explanation or backstory they tend to get bored. If you begin your memoir with this emotionally invested event, then you will grab their attention—even if this means telling your story out of chronological order. If you have a strong piece of memory, then you have a place to start.

Another excellent place to begin a memoir is the present day, who you are now, as opposed to starting with something that happened in your past. Of course, some writers may find writing about themselves in the present difficult. They may not have a clear picture of who they are in this moment and need some support in defining their voice and identity.

Try this exercise: Write in the third person (he/she/they, not the first person of I/me) as if someone else is describing you: physically, your frame of mind, your emotional state, your physical surroundings, and any other details that you feel define you. Write nonstop for fifteen minutes. When you’ve finished you’ll have a descriptive entry that introduces you as the main character of your memoir. If you want to use this, rewrite it in the first person (if your memoir is in first person). You can also use these elements as a “character study” for you, the “character.”

The Creative Editing of Reality: Techniques for Writing Memoir

Introducing Timeline and Structure

With almost all memoirs, the authors have revised the timeline somewhat, even if it’s just omitting the mundane sections. Life isn’t all that interesting when you include the day-to-day nuances. If you began each day with you waking up, brushing your teeth, heading out to chow, your reader would probably be left wondering why they bothered to read your memoir. By leaving those parts out, or at the very least keeping them to a minimum, you have already begun to edit reality. Ignore all the but it didn’t happen exactly that way thoughts you may be having and look to the core “scenes” that are going to tell your story.

Also, for the sake of the “story,” we can play with time. Events that may have happened in the same time frame, but not on the same day, can be arranged closer together. You can begin at the end and then work your way back, or vice versa. As science fiction writer Ray Cum-mings wrote, “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” Which, if you take that to heart, gives you a whole lot of freedom to condense, rearrange, and edit time. However you choose to structure your memoir is totally up to you. I know that might not be what you want to hear, but there is no magical formula. Your structural choices are what make your memoir completely your own. In any case, you’ll eventually need to figure out the answers to these questions:

•Where does the memoir begin?

•How does each scene move the memoir forward?

•How does the memoir end?

Try this exercise: The three-sentence descriptive summary— that is, summarize the period in your life that you want to write about in two or three sentences. Your sentences will portray a beginning, middle, and end—revealing how you view yourself, your past, and your present—and will not only define your memoir but also establish the basic outline that you can use to begin structuring your book.

Driving the Story: Plot and Narrative Arc

When you first start to write, you might not know exactly what your memoir is about. Maybe you want to write about your traumatic childhood, a recent incident, the crime that got you sentenced to prison, or how about that one amazing personal experience that everyone has told you that you should write a book about. All of these and more are reason enough to write. However, there still needs to be some “focus” to the memoir—the reason you are writing it and, in turn, the reason for reading it.

To borrow another fiction concept, there has to be a “narrative arc”: a sequence of scenes that is structured to (1) engage the reader, (2) keep them reading, and (3) lead them, and the story, to a conclusion.

Some authors choose to tell their story in a straight line—as it actually played out in real life. In the following excerpt from Solitary, a memoir by Albert Woodfox, the story is laid out in a linear structure. This approach is a traditional narrative arc in storytelling, and for beginning writers it allows them to just tell their story without having to rely on complicated literary devices. Regardless of where you are in your writing journey, sometimes the best way to write your story is the simplest.

Nothing was different my second time at Angola. I was assigned the same dorm on the trustee side, Cypress 1. I had the same job, working in the fields. I knew the routine. I knew the psychology. I was 100 percent confident I wouldn’t have to worry about being bullied or raped or “paying draft,” paying someone not to bully or beat you up or take your personal property. Everybody knew who Fox was and everybody knew you didn’t fuck with me. When I came down the walk on fresh fish day there were four or five dudes who greeted me as a friend. When I put my stuff on the bunk this time before being taken to the clothing room I didn’t have to ask anyone to watch it. My shit was still there when I got back, as I knew it would be.

Before starting to write, consider making a timeline of events you want to include. This will help you determine where best to begin your memoir and how much backstory you need to provide. If you’re having trouble with structure, do what almost all writers do—read other writers’ work. Here are a few memoirs that have a different and unique structure:

•Randall Horton’s memoir of transformation, Hook, uses Horton’s correspondence in letters with a woman awaiting trial to move the narrative between past and present.

•In her memoir Excavation, Wendy C. Ortiz uses passages from her teenage journals and present-day narrative to write of an illicit child-teacher relationship when she was thirteen.

•Rob Roberge’s Liar is an intense read in which Roberge simply chronicles his memories as they come to him. There’s practically no structure, and at the same time there is. He also writes in second person (“You do this . . .”), which also makes for an interesting read.

•With Down These Mean Streets, Piri Thomas utilizes a lyrical conversational narrative broken down into three sections of his life: living in Spanish Harlem, living in Long Island, and finally going to prison for shooting a cop.

•James Brown’s (not the singer) The Los Angeles Diaries is a memoir told in connected short stories. Brown is an author to read for various literary techniques, but it’s his economic and sparse prose that really resonates.

Creating the World: Scene and Setting

Setting is the time and place of the memoir. The author might come right out and state the exact time and place, or setting can be achieved by referencing world events that occurred in the same time frame as your story, more subtle elements such as politics and music, or even something as minute as the season can be used to establish the time or era when the memoir takes place.

A scene is a section of your story where a character or characters engage in action or dialogue—portraying an experience. Each scene requires its own structure: a beginning, middle, and end. While this is not a hard-and-fast rule, it does give you a way to evaluate how your nonfiction/memoir chapters are working. Ask yourself: If taken out of context, can your chapters stand alone as mini stories?

Think of writing a scene as drawing an image in the reader’s mind, rather than telling the reader what to think or believe. Immerse the reader in your scene by engaging in specific details. Let’s say your scene is in an urban setting. You are among buildings, in an alleyway. You can convey the nature of that environment by describing the surrounding area. Is there graffiti, trash, or maybe some homeless people? Or is it a windswept dirt and crabgrass exercise yard? Just by using such details, the reader is made aware of the tone of the scene.

Here’s a perfect example from the opening scene of Edward Bunker’s The Animal Factory. Though the work is considered fiction, Bunker draws the scene from his lived experience in prison:

Dawn pushed a faint line of yellow on the city’s low skyline when the prisoners, nearly five hundred of them, were herded from the jail’s sallyport to the parking lot. Waiting was a fleet of black-and-white buses with barred windows and heavy wire separating the driver area from the seats. The air was filled with acrid diesel exhaust and the stench of rotting garbage. The ragtag prisoners, more than half of them black or Chicano, were in columns of two, six to a chain, a busload to a group; they looked like human centipedes. Everywhere were deputy sheriffs in knife-creased uniforms. Three deputies were assigned to each bus, while the others stood back with fat .357 Magnum Pythons dangling from their hands. A few fondled short-barreled shotguns.

Bunker is a master of scene and setting. From his first sentence that firmly creates the setting, his descriptive narrative pulls the reader in. In compact detailed sentences, he defines the prison hierarchy and the criminal justice system (without coming off as if he’s explaining it). In two distinct paragraphs, the setting has been established and the scene is then able to unfold.

Characters Are the Soul of Your Story

Even though your “characters” are real people, for the sake of communicating, we’re going to be calling everyone in the memoir a character—even you. With memoir, your characters have already been made—you don’t really get much choice other than deciding whether or not to include them, which depends on what the character is doing for the story. But the real problem to avoid is failing to “give” them fully to your reader. Writers tend to know their characters intimately and write them with an image in their minds. Sometimes when we know something so well, we forget to fully explain it, and this can leave the character too vague and one dimensional.

Try this exercise: Create a character study by writing a list of everything that reminds you of that character: their attitude, hygiene, facial expressions; the type of cigarettes they smoke, the drugs or booze, if any, they use; the foods they eat; the types of books, magazines, and newspapers they read (or don’t); the TV and films they watch; the company they keep; the decisions they make; the language they use when they speak; and so on. With this list you now have bits and pieces of information that you can insert throughout the memoir when you’re writing about this character. This way we can avoid the lengthy character descriptions. Such description does have its place in our work, but using it sparingly alongside action and dialogue adds more variety to our writing.

Now remember when I said you are also a character in your memoir? All the techniques and craft utilized to give your characters to the reader can also be used to give you, the author, to the reader. After all, it is a memoir, and instead of just stating I think this and my opinion is that, if you show yourself through dialogue, decisions, behaviors, mistakes, and actions, the reader will understand more about you than simply by telling them. An excellent example of showing (not telling) a character is this excerpt from Jerry Stahl’s dark addiction memoir, Permanent Midnight.

One 3:00 a.m., gripped by the craving, the drive that’s beyond describing if you haven’t already died and survived it, I follow a cat-eyed young Latina into a doorway off a street I couldn’t even find in daylight, through the cast-iron door of a blacked-out abandoned building somewhere in Pico-Union. Nina asleep in my arms, not even wakened by my nervous sniffling, I stepped down that pitch-black broken-glass hallway, the corners stinking of stale piss, stumbling behind this complete stranger into a candlelit room where half a dozen other lost souls crouched or sat in various stages of junk sickness and junk relief. No one looked up. I gave the homegirl my money, waited in stillness while she made her way across the room to dig up the soiled bag where she kept the balloons. I held Nina in my arms, trying not to look at the face of the nearest figure, a muttering skeleton sprawled by a pillar at my feet. Tried not to think, until the skeleton looked up, raised its arms and with a mouthful of missing teeth, through pus-blackened lips, said, “Nice baby. . . . Lemme hold the baby. . . .”

Stahl’s ultimate “character study” gives the reader his true self and what he is capable of due to his addiction to heroin. Stahl is not trying to make himself look good or give the reader excuses for his actions. Utilizing dialogue, action, and summary narrative, he presents a vivid picture of not only the event but also himself, the central character in his memoir. It is unforgettable and intense.

Of course, there may be some of you who feel your story isn’t anywhere near this powerful, attention-grabbing, or exciting, so you won’t have the emotional payout that Stahl has. While you may not have such extreme material, you still have the emotions that made your experiences, and no matter what level of intensity your scenes might involve, when you give the reader your true self, that becomes the emotional payout.

Reading with New Eyes: The Art of Revision

I tend to write wordy first drafts, meaning I get bogged down in explanation and description and just generally give way too much information. I always seem to include needless details that slow the writing to the point where even I get bored. This is my writing process. I know I’m going to write some clunky run-on sentences in order to get through the first draft. I have long ago given up on achieving initial perfection. I know when I revise my work, I’ll carve away to the piece I really wanted to write.

Revision, however, is more than just making a few changes and eliminating a couple of words. In order to access your best work, you need to let go of your ego and accept that some of your sentences, paragraphs, and maybe even the entire piece needs to be rewritten, or omitted entirely. If it isn’t serving the overall story, save it for use in the future, perhaps in another piece, and move on.

On the Reliability of Memory

Most of us have memories that haunt us, and then there are parts of the past that we can barely recollect. We tend to remember the hard memories with more clarity than the happy ones. The more emotional and traumatic an event, the more likely we are to remember the minute and specific details—like witnessing an act of violence—remembering it as if watching a replay in slow motion. How we retain these hard memories may have roots in how humans evolved—we stored these memories to protect us when we reencountered similar life-threatening or detrimental events.

Yet whether good or bad, it is safe to say that we review memory through a filter of emotions—fear, guilt, love, anger, shame, happiness, desire, resentments, and more. There are many studies on how memory works, from law school papers on the unreliability of eyewitness testimony to articles and clinical treatises regarding the ability, or inability, to remember events due to our emotional attachments and frame of mind—all of which have produced conflicting results and opinions. But if there is one aspect that the experts agree on, it’s that memory isn’t perfect.

For our purposes, what actually matters is that we remember what we remember, and that is our story. If someone else remembers it differently, then tell them to go write their own damn memoir.

On Writing through Trauma

In my first book, a memoir of the eighteen years I was addicted to heroin and my inevitable decline through the dregs of society and eventually into crime, I wrote about a lot of very tough and painful times and events from my past. I’m not proud of a great portion of the memories that got me locked up. But in order to really write about them, I had to essentially relive them over again, and in doing so, I was plagued with a ton of remorse and guilt. The process of reexamining the past opened a mental floodgate, and the memories would suddenly appear one after another in Technicolor and Dolby sound, complete with all the anxiety, anger, resentments, and fear that the original events evoked. Some so vivid that I experienced panic attacks, gasping for air, my heart pounding. I would eventually learn from a psychiatrist at the rehab where I finally got clean that having these kinds of “waking dreams” was one of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

I was particularly haunted by a friend’s death back in 1994 in San Francisco. I had carried with me for years the idea that I could have somehow saved him if I hadn’t been using drugs, or at least had been present enough to notice he hadn’t been around. My friend’s health had not been good, he didn’t take care of himself, and like me, he used drugs. But the underlying real factor was my friend had died of a brain aneurysm due to a blood clot. And when I actually wrote this memory down, detailing all the facts, I was able to come to an understanding that there was nothing I could have done differently. I am not a doctor. My friend never confided in me how sick he actually was. And even more concretely, I don’t know if I was even in the building at the time of his death.

It wasn’t until I wrote the entire incident down on paper, examining the reality of what had actually happened, that I realized this was just the story I was telling myself. I don’t know why I was telling myself this story—possibly it was my way of coping with the loss of a friend. But really, that doesn’t matter. What is important is that after I did re-evaluate the actual truth, I came to a place of acceptance, and this incident no longer played in my mind’s repertoire of horrific memories.

Consequently, as I continued writing, I was able to revisit a majority of my difficult memories; only now I was able to look at them with a much different perspective. Before I had strong feelings about what had happened, but most of those feelings were either displaced or subject to unreal expectations and resentments—most of which I was placing on myself. Yet every time I actually wrote out a memory, I was able to get a better understanding of the event. A lot of times I was able to work my way through it and eventually put it to rest.

Now, that was my process. All of our experiences will be different. Some of you may need to go into detail, some may need to write more about the emotions, and some may need to place blame. There is no right or wrong here. The best thing to keep in mind is that this is you writing from the place you are now. Not you from when it actually happened. My memory was many years old; some of you may have a much more recent experience to deal with. Time heals a lot of wounds, but it doesn’t make them go away. And what we are writing about now is how those events affected us. Keep in mind this isn’t a race. It has taken me years to write some memories—the process was hard, I hit a wall of emotions, and the going was slow. But that’s OK. Even with slow writing, the work gets done.

On Dramatic Theater

Sarah Shourd

How I Began Writing Theater after Prison

The Inciting Incident

When I was finally given a pen after five months in solitary confinement in an Iranian prison, my world grew exponentially. Lying on my stomach on the carpeted floor of my cell, I wrote page after page after page, in very small script, so as not to waste space. The ability to mark words on a page took on a quality that I can only describe as magical—a nothingness replaced by a somethingness, a presence instead of absence—tangible proof that I existed outside of the fear and chaos of my own mind. I’d been ripped out of reality and thrown into a cell, where I couldn’t go to the bathroom or breathe fresh air without begging for permission. Where control of my body, my time, my future, and my rights had all been stolen from me. Where I hadn’t been given a single phone call, much less access to a lawyer. . . . The question I began to ask myself on the page was, Do I still have choice?

When a guard opened the door of my cell, for example, avoiding eye contact and placing a plastic container of food on the hallway floor for me to pick up instead of handing it to me, my body would flood with rage. Other times, at the first glimpse of a face in the crack of my cell door, I would begin sobbing, only to have the cell door shut in my face. I had never had my own emotions be so completely out of my control, and clearly hurting myself or making myself vulnerable to power-tripping guards didn’t serve me, but was it up to me how I reacted? Did “free will” exist in any meaningful way in a context where I was so highly triggered and frightened, or had my reactions become automatic? Without freedom, was there still an “I”? And if so, who was “I” responsible to?

I owed the guards nothing, that I felt certain of. They’d severed the human contract by participating in the illegal imprisonment of an innocent woman for their country’s political gain. Yet underneath the emotional mask worn by each guard was the face of a human being, and what I needed, more than anything else, was human contact.

Here was the essence of conflict: What was more important, my mental health or my self-respect? Protecting myself from rejection and more emotional pain, or taking a risk that might lead to getting a little of what I needed to stay sane? I discovered I still had the ability to choose. And I chose to try to interact with the guards in a way that didn’t give away my power.

With every guard, that looked different. With Leila, I would speak Arabic and try and get her to teach me Farsi. With Maryam, I would act the fool (taking my shirt off, for example, and smelling my armpits). Stone-faced Nargess I would flatter in an attempt to get a smile (what beautiful eyes you have, woman!). With Mask Lady (she refused to tell me her name), I would take a warrior stance and stare her down menacingly with my legs spread and my hands on my hips until she eventually gave in and handed me my lunch.

The life of a prisoner can be boiled down to the essential elements of dramatic form and structure: Desire. Conflict. Motivation. Action. Think about your own life. A year later, I would get out of that cell, come home to my country, and begin to write The BOX, which would, in part, mine the insights and experiences I had in an Iranian prison. In this chapter, I’ll share with you what I’ve learned about dramatic theater, and ways to enter the writing process, through the story of writing my first play.

The Prewriting Process: Purpose, Research, and Concept Building

When I was released from prison after 410 days in isolation, I felt an overwhelming need to connect with some of the tens of thousands of people suffering in solitary confinement in my own country, the United States. I wanted to know how they were coping—if they were coping. I began writing letters. I corresponded with about a dozen prisoners, some of them weekly, over the span of six months—people in prisons across the country who had been subjected to isolation for years or even decades. I sent them questions, and they sent me answers and more questions back.

These letter correspondences led to my conducting journalistic investigations. In the course of two years I visited thirteen prisons, jails, and detention centers across the country and interviewed over seventy-five people either currently or formerly in solitary confinement. This impulse to connect, despite walls and all manner of obstacles, would later become the central and galvanizing purpose of my play.

It was my colleague Jean Casella who first suggested I write a play. I immediately welcomed the idea, but I hadn’t a clue where to begin. At that point, most of my published work had been as a journalist. I’d never studied playwriting, though I did have some background in political theater. I knew I wanted to write a play that “got it right,” drawing from my own experience, as well as my years of interviewing prisoners in solitary confinement in the US—to create an authentic, accurate portrayal of the people inside. I wanted to reach an audience that might not understand solitary confinement, might never have spoken to a survivor or have any idea what it’s like to live in fear of going to prison. In short, I wanted to write for a privileged audience, perhaps largely white, and I wanted to create documentary theater, which uses interviews and events directly sourced from the real world.

Theater is an imitation or representation of life, performed for other people. Your experience of research and concept building will look different from mine—perhaps the whole story is coming from your own imagination, or perhaps you read historical texts for insight. The following questions might aid and guide in the start of your concept-building process. Take a few moments to write your answers down so you can later revisit them.

•Why do you want to write a play?

•What do you want to write a play about?

•What experiences or observations in your life can you draw from?

•Why does this play need to be written?

•What does this play need in order to be written? (Research, resources.)

•Who is your audience?

•What is your impulse, the deep and urgent feeling propelling you to write a play, this play?

Writing the First Draft

The first draft of my play came from a raw, unfiltered place. I was writing while living with acute PTSD from my own imprisonment. Sometimes after a visit to a prisoner at Pelican Bay State Prison in Northern California I would come home, close the blinds, crawl under a blanket, and stay there for hours, trying to process what I’d just seen and felt and turn it into theater.

This is how I would begin. I’d close my eyes and imagine myself back in my solitary cell. What were the sounds? I’d hear footsteps coming down the prison corridor, the constant static of air flowing through the vent, a faucet running in someone else’s cell. I’d feel my body clench, slightly, my face harden and my heart beat a little faster. Once I was situated in place, I would think about a letter from a prisoner I’d read that morning, or the person I’d recently attempted to connect with at Pelican Bay through a pane of thick glass. What was it like to be him in that cell? What would he be thinking about, what would he want?

The obvious answer was freedom—but freedom was often far from the reach of the people I’d been interviewing. I needed to drill down to something more concrete. What did this real person, whom my imagination would eventually develop into a character, want today? Maybe it was an hour of uninterrupted sleep? Perhaps to be able to remember the felt-sense of another person’s smile? Maybe what he wanted more than anything else was an excuse to scream profanity and vent his rage at the person celled next to him.

In order to create characters, I had to know them intimately and honestly—to know when they were thinking something they would never say out loud, and when they were deceiving themselves. Why? Because that secret thought will inform what they do, say, or write and what choices they make. It’s these deep desires and motivations that I would need to mine in order to create the authentic dialogue and actions that would propel my play. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing about something you’ve directly experienced or not; either way, you’re going to have to crawl inside the experience and understand it.

It’s important to note that these writing sessions could be intense and triggering—something many writers contend with when working with human subjects. I’d come out of those sessions under the blanket completely wiped out. I was developing a writing practice that combined research and observation with going inside myself and listening, creating a container from which I could tap into the memory of my own prison experience, while synthesizing the stories I’d been gathering from prisoners across the country.

Through this, I discovered that it is essential to have boundaries around your writing practice. At the end of a writing day I’d recover and try to reset (easier said than done) by finding ways to unwind (meditation, talking to a friend, exercise) so I’d be able to sleep. The next day I’d come back, read what I’d written, revisit my notes, or read a few letters, then go back under the blanket. Needless to say, it was a hard process.

The First Stage of Writing: Reading

Once you have your messy first draft, the next phase you’ll enter is editing and refining, and it will be far more analytical in nature. But for now I recommend putting it aside and filling your conscious and unconscious mind with theatrical greatness. We’ll talk a lot about dramatic structure later in this essay, but for now I want you to take a break from writing to read as many plays as you can get your hands on: Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz & Guil-denstern Are Dead, Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Jesus Hopped the “A” Train, Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist, and Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex are a few I love.

Later in this chapter I’ll recommend rereading your favorite play, searching for specific elements and devices, and taking notes on how they are used by the author. For now, your job is to enjoy these plays, paying attention to what you like and what works.

The Basic Elements of Theater: Understanding the Conventions

The three basic elements of theater are literary, technical, and performative. Technical elements include costumes, props, lights, sound, music, and makeup, and performative pertains to the journey of the actors who will bring the work to life. For the purpose of this essay, we’ll be dealing exclusively with the literary elements—in other words, writing a script. This includes plot, characters, dialogue, conflict, suspense, stage direction, themes, and more. A script is what the playwright provides to the actors, director, stage manager, and designers so they can do their part to bring the play to life.

At this point, I recommend learning these literary elements well. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Not every play has to adhere strictly to the structure I will outline here, of course—modern, for example, is a school of dramatic thought that breaks with tradition, redefining conventions of the past—but there are good reasons why these tried-and-true techniques work so well. I would argue that you need to deeply understand these classic conventions before you should consider breaking them, which will help make your choices deliberate and informed. There is no single way to write a play. The elements of playwriting I will outline below can emerge, or be decided upon, at different stages for every writer.

Determining Plot

The plot is the events of a play, or the arrangement of action. The themes are the basic ideas, or point of view, that bind the whole work together. The plot of my play is how people use collective resistance, a hunger strike, to find a voice and change their conditions. A few of the themes are that solitary confinement is torture, that people need meaningful human connection to stay sane, and that when given a choice, nearly all humans will choose to seek growth and redemption.

The Centrality of Action

Perhaps the most important element of a play is action: the events, large and small, that develop the plot. In his book Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays (Southern Illinois University Press, 1983), David Ball writes that “a play is a series of actions.... Why do you think actors are called actors”? A play is a train that doesn’t stop moving until its final destination. Every word in your script can and should advance the plot, must in fact be indispensable to the forward momentum and ultimate resolution. Like a row of dominoes, each action triggers the next, every event leading to the next event, until the play’s denouement.

Writing for the stage is the most challenging task I’ve taken on as a writer—not to mention a play about solitary confinement. How much action can possibly take place in a six-by-ten-foot cell with no windows, no other people, and no way out? What about dialogue? Was my play going to be a person (or several personalities) speaking to themselves for ninety minutes? I wasn’t sure I wanted to even see that play let alone write it.

In fact, many successful plays take place in small or confined spaces. After all, a stage is a limited space. When you write for the stage, you must think about how to inspire your audience’s imagination to think beyond what they’re seeing, to imagine their way into a space larger than the prison you’re in, or the stage the actors are performing on. A key way that I worked around the limitations of action in solitary confinement was by creating fascinating characters with rich inner worlds.

Creating Characters

All of the characters in my play were hybrids, drawing deeply from men and women I met in prisons across the country, while fictionalizing them in ways that both served the story and protected their identities. The protagonist is the main character, sometimes called the hero, and the antagonist is the person or persons trying to do harm. Your characterizations need not be so black and white, though. For example, an antihero is a flawed protagonist, often more relatable to a contemporary audience.

During the writing stage it’s useful to have your characters be as fleshed out as possible. Even if these details never make it into the script, details like what they like to eat, how they dress, quirks and ticks, as well as ample backstory, will help you write authentically from the character’s point of view and develop their unique voice.

Here’s a description of a character in my play. Notice the focus on motivation:

Jake Juchau: White, in prison twenty-five years, convicted of armed robbery and assault, in and out of solitary many times, this last stint for over seven years. Jake’s hyperactive movements are a barometer for the level of tension in the pod. He tries to keep the frenzied animal inside him on a leash by meditating and practicing breathing exercises. Jake has a superiority complex, hates the guards and other prisoners in the pod. Usually leaves his shirt off, revealing slightly sagging muscles and a large swastika tattooed on his chest.

Motivated by Desire: Dialogue and Character Development

When I was in Iran, we left notes in the communal bathroom trash tucked inside sanitary napkins colored with beef stew, passed down knocks on the wall, shouted through our food slots and air vents. In US prisons, I learn about how prisoners in solitary can sometimes communicate through their shared vent, and how people send messages to each other by “flying kites” or “fishing” under their cell doors. All of these methods were written into my play and adapted for the stage. We humans will always find a way to communicate.

Perhaps the most important thing about theatrical dialogue is that everything the characters say to one another must be a manifestation of their motivation—in other words, an attempt to get what they want. What they want could be attention, or a moment of silence, or to start a fight. Characters don’t just talk for the sake of talking.

As noted above, plays are a series of actions, one leading to the next, from start to finish. Desire is uneventful without obstacles, or resistance to characters’ getting what they want. Ball lays it out concisely when he writes that a desire meeting an obstacle is what creates dramatic conflict, which is “the force that drives the play from action to action.”

Keep in mind: each character should have an emotional arc or transformation, in particular your main character or protagonist.

The Inciting Event and Exposition

Now that I’d found my play’s plot and purpose, identified my characters, and experimented with their voices, I needed to kick off the action with an inciting event. An inciting event is something that disrupts an otherwise static environment, jarring the status quo and “setting free the irresistible forces that run the play from that point on.” (Ball, again). It only happens once during the play, and toward the beginning.

For The BOX, I chose the arrival of a new prisoner, Rocky Ash-bury, who in scene 1 is dragged in, struggling to break the grip of the guards, and thrown into a cell. When Ray De Paul, a Black Panther, cautions Rocky to stop antagonizing the guards in the first scene, another prisoner, Victor Santiago, quips, “No, please don’t stop. Just keep entertaining us. This is the best thing we’ve had in a long time.”

The entrance of this brazen, hilarious kid—full of cursing, threats, and bravado—dramatically shifts the energy in this lifeless pod filled with hardened, older men, changing the plot of the play with both profound and eventually devastating consequences. Almost immediately Rocky’s arrival lays bare the dynamics between the three other men (a Black Panther, a Latino leader, and a white supremacist). In addition to it being an inciting event, a stylistic benefit of having a new kid come onto the pod is that it gives an opportunity for the older guys to explain the ropes, educating Rocky and giving the audience some at the same time.

Exposition, an essential element of any narrative writing, is the information needed, whether it’s background on the characters’ lives before prison or explanation of how the prison is run. For example, in The BOX, the first letter that old-timer Ray writes to young Rocky is full of useful information the audience needs to understand the pod, as well as foreshadowing to whet our interest for what’s to come.

Ray writes,

People die in here. Their bodies might keep on but there is a spiritual death. You’ll see pools of blood running down these halls. Guys slash their arms and legs, cut up their own body parts, just to feel something. Others are at war for years, throwing shit and piss, screaming at each other.

(beat)

For every action there’s a reaction. Things can go from 1 to 100 in the blink of an eye. Kind of like locking up Obama, Netanyahu and the Ayatollah in the same pod—are they gonna like each other? Hell no! But it’s in everybody’s interest to maintain diplomacy.

(beat)

If you pissed at the cops? Learn the law. Everything good happens in here it’s because somebody like you learned to use the law as a weapon. Been fighting my case 36 years.

(beat)

Alright, kid, make sure you get rid of this letter when you’re done reading it. Eyes on the prize, youngster, eyes on the prize.

(RAY sits down. ROCKY tears up the letter and flushes it down the toilet)

By the way, a little exposition is necessary, but you might be surprised at how little the audience actually needs to know—we tend to fill in the blanks with our imaginations pretty well. We do need to tell some things, but the goal is for them to come out as naturally as possible. In my example, the above letter is performed by Ray while we see Rocky reading it in his cell. In The BOX, the letters prisoners pass back and forth, as well as letters received from people on the outside, are useful tools for exposition. They’re a form of monologue, or long speech made by one actor, delivered alone or in the presence of others. Another method for delivering exposition is through soliloquy, a speech in which an actor, usually alone on stage, speaks their inner thoughts aloud.

But these tactics must be used sparingly. In my first draft, there were quite a few long monologues like this one, but once I saw my play come to life—read and acted by real people in readings, rehearsals, and eventually on stage, I realized that monologues can often sit like huge boulders on stage. It’s hard to write a monologue with enough urgency that it won’t disrupt your play’s steady ascension of action. In my current version, there are very few (and even as I’m writing this I’m wondering if I can get rid of any more!).

Determining Genre Structure

The most common genres in theater are tragedy, comedy, and melodrama—which can further be broken down into farce, allegory, and more. Tragedy has its roots in ancient Greek theater and depicts humans as the victims of destiny or fate. Aristotle has written a lot about this. Comedy treats characters and situations in a humorous way. All plays, no matter how serious the subject matter, should have some comic relief, which can be as important as a bathroom break, especially when the topic is heavy. Melodrama tends to feature a lot of action, a high level of emotion, and a black-and-white view of right and wrong, good and evil, with the former triumphing over the latter. Farce is simply comedy that is so extreme it’s improbable and even absurd, and allegory has an underlying meaning that teaches a lesson about life.

Developing Style

Many plays have more than one element of different genres. In my opinion, even more important than genre is style, or how a play is written. From the beginning, my intention was to create a play in the style of naturalism (or realism, which is practically the same thing—expressionism and absurdity are other examples of styles). I also veer toward immersive theater, which stimulates and maximizes the multisensory experience of the audience through sound, set design, and other methods. After you become familiar with the basics outlined in this chapter, I suggest getting a good book on playwriting. David Ball’s Backwards & Forwards has become my favorite, as you might have already noticed.

Working in Acts: Rising Action, Climax, and Falling Action

An act is a major division in a play. Between acts there is an intermission, or a break. Most plays have two acts (though some have only one and others have three). Two is the safest route to go, because that’s what audiences are expecting. The first act usually consists of rising actions—scenes that contribute to and culminate in a climax at the end of the act, something dramatic enough to impact the audience before the intermission and ensure they return and watch the rest of the show. The second act is then a series of falling actions leading to the ultimate resolution of the play.

Drama as Embodied, Collaborative Art Form

Something to keep in mind when you’re writing is that a play is a live, visual medium. It stimulates all the senses and works on the emotions in an embodied, somatic way that no other medium can compare to. There are many elements of theater, and each tells a piece of the story your words won’t have to—all you have to do is make sure your words don’t get in the way. Speaking of economy of language, as the writer, stage direction should also be minimal (leave that job to your director and stage manager). Words are only a fraction of the sum of a play, so use them wisely.

Theater is a collaborative process. By this time, the characters I’d created had become real people to me, but even so, you never want the character descriptions in your play script to be too fleshed out or specific. I’d later have to let go when a flesh-and-blood actor stepped in and made one of my characters her own. The characters you create, though complex and nuanced, are merely the skeleton on which an actor will eventually hang their flesh. You want the bones of your characters to be strong but the flesh to be flexible enough to allow space for creative freedom.

The Revision Process

Getting Trusted Feedback

Ask a friend (or a few friends) to read your draft out loud while you lie on your back with your eyes closed and just listen. Then, have them read it again while you take notes. The second time stop and ask them to repeat a line that doesn’t sound right to you, then ask them to repeat it again. Is that how someone would say it in real life? Ask them how they would say it.

If it isn’t possible to get someone else involved, simply read the play aloud to yourself. Most importantly, ask the character (in your mind) how they would say it. I did a lot of readings with formerly incarcerated people in order to get my words right. Ninety-nine percent of the time dialogue doesn’t work unless it sounds like real people talking. Ask your friend to save their feedback until the end. Welcome all feedback, take it graciously, but always with a grain of salt.

At this point I also recommend giving a copy of your draft to someone (or two or three people) to read, preferably another writer or someone who knows a lot about the subject you’re writing about, but most importantly to someone you respect and who you think will be able to communicate their feedback well. Send a list of your questions with it. For example:

What surprised you?

What worked?

Did the dialogue feel authentic?

Did you ever feel disengaged or bored?

Who was your favorite character?

Did you believe it when she stabbed him?

Were there parts that didn’t make sense?

What did you think of the ending?

Ruthless Editing

Notes in hand, you’re back to the process of streamlining, making sure every word is necessary to the forward movement and, eventually, resolution of the plot. Go back over the essentials again and again:

•Why does the character say this; what do they want?

•How does this scene build toward the climax or generally advance the plot?

•Is this exposition necessary?

•Is this scene or line consistent with my style?

•Is there a more concise way to say this?

•Will the play benefit if I have the strength to “kill this darling”?

Before you get overly attached to how things are, now is a good time for some brutal macro-editing. Many editors call this killing your darlings. It means getting rid of the parts you love the most, or worked on the hardest, that might even mean the most to you. If they ultimately don’t serve the play, you have to cut them.

Playing and Experimenting

Here is a useful exercise to try with an advanced draft: Make a list of all your scenes on a piece of paper. Tear up the paper so each strip has the name of one scene written on it. Now, throw the strips on the floor. Spend the next thirty minutes to an hour rearranging the order of your scenes in unexpected ways. Entertain what-ifs: What if the play starts at the end? What if we never actually see her steal the money?

You might realize an entire scene, as beautiful as it is, really does just sit there like a rock. If it doesn’t move the plot and character development, throw it out (well, save it somewhere just in case you change your mind; it might work somewhere else, in some other way). A new scene might emerge. A new play might emerge. A character might have to be cut, or added. Trust it. Try things. Back to the drawing board. Macro-editing is brutal at first, but it gets easier—after years and years of writing, this has honestly become my favorite part.

Then, go over and over each line with a fine-tooth comb. Here is one of the results of the editing process that I stumbled upon: Once I felt confident that The BOX was firmly rooted in naturalism, authenticity, and my research and experience in the real world, I began to allow myself to detour from strict naturalism—or realism—in the spirit of harnessing the full power of theater. Here is where I began intentionally breaking the rules, so to speak, and discovered different ways to tell the story, departing from the classical methods.

This impulse bore fruit particularly in what I call the “group monologues,” or three collective poems performed at the beginning, middle, and end. The first group monologue is a collectively performed letter to Rocky about prison conditions and the ropes. One prisoner recites a line, and the next takes up where they left off until the letter is done. This group monologue captures the blurring of individual identity that is both positive and negative in a solitary confinement pod—the unbearable intimacy that adds to both collective torture and collective resistance.

The second group monologue, at the beginning of act 2, is more of a collective poem, and Rocky participates in the reading/performing even though he’s dead and no longer in his cell. Characters coming back from the dead is obviously not strict naturalism, but I felt Rocky’s presence was needed at this point to remind the audience how profoundly his suicide has affected the remaining characters and the rest of the play.

The risk with any detour from naturalism is that you lose your audience’s trust in the narrative. It must be clear that this decision drives the action forward. Trust is what allows an audience to surrender to the spell of a theater experience—it’s earned and not to be trifled with.

Nailing the Ending

The end of every play, says Ball, is “when major forces either get what they want or are forced to stop trying.” This should involve an even bigger climax than the end of act 1, one that brings all the narrative threads together into convergence, or resolution. I struggled very much with writing the end of The BOX. I got to a point where I’d written three or four versions, but none of them felt emotionally honest—none of them worked. I felt stuck, frustrated, and inadequate. I felt scared.

Then came perhaps the most unforgettable moment in my writing career. One night, I sat up in bed in the middle of the night. Looking around the room, I could hear the wind outside and see light coming in from the window. I felt angry to be awake, but I kept looking around the room, as if I was searching for something. Then, in a flash, the end of my play was right in front of me. I could see it, like a photograph, and it was far simpler than any of the others I had written.

In his last line, Victor Santiago breaks the fourth wall, followed by the other characters. The fourth wall is the invisible wall between an audience and actors that maintains the powerful illusion of the “real.” An actor breaks that wall when they address the audience directly, calling to attention the artifice of the theater, the fact that theater is real people “pretending” to be someone else. Breaking the wall is unconventional, but it can be very powerful if done right. In this case, Victor, then Ray, Rocky, and Jake break the wall in order to call the audience into the experience of incarceration.

What to Include in the Script

Description of Characters

The beginning of every play script should include short descriptions of each character. You do not need to be specific about characteristics that don’t matter. For example, in some cases the age of a character is non-negotiable, but in other cases you can give a wider range of ages that are acceptable.

Stage Directions

In the first draft of my play, I had long, exhaustive stage directions, such as “He slumps over when she speaks, turning his head slightly to the right, then looking down at his hands.” Remember, this is not a novel! Let the actors and directors do their jobs. The main stage directions you need are EXIT STAGE RIGHT, EXIT STAGE LEFT, ENTER STAGE RIGHT, ENTER STAGE LEFT. (Stage right is actually the left side of the stage when you’re sitting in the audience and vice versa. Center stage is exactly what it sounds like. Downstage is closer to the audience, and upstage is farther away, near the backstage.) Minimal stage direction gives the director more creative freedom, which is almost always a good thing.

Beats, Pauses, and Silence

An essential part of dialogue is adding beats, pauses, and silence. These are helpful indicators for the actors about when to leave a brief space between words (a beat), when to take a breath (a pause), and when to leave an uncomfortable amount of time, perhaps an entire second or more (silence). Beats, pauses, and silences break up dialogue and make it more natural. They can also add significantly to the dramatic tension. You might want to add a pause, for example, when one character is withholding information from another, or when a character can’t think of anything to say. The amount of beats and pauses can add significantly to character development.

Formatting

Formatting is the last thing you should do. According to the standard playwriting format, act and scene headings should be centered. Character names should be centered and capitalized. Stage directions are indented one tab and italicized. Character names in stage directions are capitalized. Parenthetical stage directions are used for small actions (such as beats, pauses, silences, laughter, and so on).

In Conclusion: Thoughts on the Creative Process

My friend, neuroscientist David Eagleman, wrote that “the conscious mind is really just the broom closet in the mansion of the brain.” What sitting up in bed showed me that night was that writing can be a practice that taps into parts of ourselves far deeper than we’re aware of. I’d struggled at my desk, day after day, for a long time. Now I was finally able to get out of my own way and allow the recesses of my mind to tap into collective wisdom. My mind was able to surrender to trust the play.

Writers are people who have cultivated an honest inner life. We’ve dared to look at our own motivations and to see the real motivations of others. Sometimes that can look pretty bleak, since many of our motivations are selfish, but we still do some pretty amazing things. The best gift that comes from all of this—trying to understand desire, motivation, and the actions we take to satisfy our desires—is empathy, right? The ability to understand ourselves and the world collectively. After all, we’re in this thing called life together.

Once I was lying on the floor of my cell, staring at a thin ray of sunlight that sometimes cut across the universe of my confinement, illuminating thousands of dust motes, bouncing off each other in the golden air. I imagined each mote as a person: playing, fighting, dancing, loving, and hating one another. I was there too, but I was alone, in a corner, out of the stream of life, but still part of it.

Theater is about relationships—relationships between people, moments, and ideas.... It’s about how essential relationships are to sanity and how extremely hard they are by any standard. Writing itself is relational; it requires solitude but is the opposite of solitary. Its purpose is to connect to something larger than yourself, and to help your audience connect to something larger than themselves—the stream of life, the world.

On Screenwriting

Alexa Alemanni

An Introduction to Screenwriting

What Makes Screenwriting Different?

A screenplay is a completely singular craft because, unlike a novel or a memoir, which when completed is automatically a finished product, a completed screenplay is only a draft of the final product. Just like architectural plans, or a design for a building, a screenplay is a foundation upon which hundreds of people, from directors to actors to camera operators, will build the final moving picture. As screenwriters, our job is to make it as easy as possible for our reader to imagine the final movie in their heads.

I’ve been a screenwriter for ten years and a teacher of screenwriting for just as long. Over the course of my career I’ve made it my mission to help students and young screenwriters develop a cohesive and simple process for developing a story that is specific to the screenwriting genre itself. Presented here is a practical guide to do just that, with simple, active steps you can take to build your story from the ground up, and then make it work for the screen.

Anchoring in Story

Though there are many ideas for story generating across this book, here is a super simple entry point: Start with a thematic word that means something to you: friendship, money, loyalty, loss, forgiveness, adulthood, and so forth. Ask yourself what you want to tell your audience about that word. For example:

Friendship is the only way to be happy.

Money will always lead to violence.

Loyalty is the only thing that matters with family.

Loss is the only way we can forgive each other.

Forgiveness is impossible.

Adulthood never really happens.

You probably feel very strongly about the opinion it holds because something you’ve experienced taught you to believe it as truth. For example: Friendship is the only way to be happy. I learned this because I used to think ________ but now after ________ happened, I understand that friendship is the only way to be happy.

Take your point-of-view sentence and consider if you used to think differently, as well as when and how you changed your perspective. The phrase write what you know means write an emotional journey you understand, one that culminates in the point of view you are hoping to communicate. For example, if my point of view is Friendship is more important than money, I could tell the story about . . .

A prison guard who is friends with an inmate, until he becomes the warden, and forgets about him. But by the end of the movie, the inmate saves the warden from death in a riot, and the warden learns the importance of connection.

A football player who is so focused on winning and getting a scholarship that he has no friends. The coach keeps telling him he plays well, but he’ll never be the #1 draft pick if he doesn’t bring the heart. He tries a bunch of ways to fake heart, but it’s not until he has to help his teammates when least expected that he learns how important friends are, regardless of if he wins or loses.

The friend of a brilliant inventor who wants to be the best in her field, but is too focused on her own ambitions to recognize the support. It is only after the inventor’s career takes off—and sick of being ignored, the supportive friend moves on from the friendship—that she realizes among her many accolades, she is now all alone.

In two of these versions, the character (the Prison Guard and the Football Player) wins the movie, meaning they learn your, the writer’s, point of view in time to have a happy ending. In one version, the character (the Inventor) loses the movie, which means she learns the point of view too late, leading to a sad ending. Regardless of outcome, in all three versions, by the end of the movie the audience has learned your point of view and felt what you wanted them to feel.

Bringing the Story to Life: Three-Act Structure

We tell stories in three-act structure all the time. It’s instinctive—we put a man in a tree, we set the tree on fire, we bring him down from the tree. That is, we set the situation up, we raise the stakes of the problem, and then we resolve it. Next we’ll use the metaphor of the man in the tree to show how action unfolds in a three-act structure.

Act 1: We Put a Man in a Tree (Setting Up the Situation)

In order for the audience to understand it’s a big deal that the “man is in the tree,” we have to understand what he was doing before he got there. This is called the status quo. In our story about the prison guard, for example, the status quo is that he’s a guard who hangs out with the inmate every day.

But we can’t just pick him up and stick him in a tree, so to speak— something has to happen that makes him go into the tree. This is called the inciting incident. The action that sets our character in motion. In our story, the inciting incident is that the guard becomes a warden (the action that happens), and therefore he leaves his friend, the inmate, behind (the choice he makes to start the story).

Act 2: We Set the Tree on Fire (Raising the Stakes)

Act 2 is all about raising the stakes. If we don’t, the characters will never find the lesson. In every screenplay, the middle of act 2 is called the midpoint. It is either the highest high or the lowest low for our character, which will push them, in the latter half of act 2, toward the insight they need.

If a character’s midpoint is the highest high, then they’ve believed things were going well, only to realize they’re not. For example, in our story about the inventor, we want her to be really successful at first. The inventor wins a bevy of honors, meets the president, and gets published, but because she’s been so driven, as she rises, we also watch her increasingly ignore the very friend who helped facilitate such rewards. At that midpoint, we might write her friend walking away from the friendship. And with that, the highest high is about to come crashing down.

In our story about the football player, we want him to be really isolated and focused on winning. Staying away from everyone, he becomes more and more frustrated by his building losses. Defeated and dejected, he has a conversation with his quarterback that offers the first glimpse into what it feels like to have a true friend. He may have just hit the lowest low, and now he begins to see the way out.

Act 3: We Bring Them Down from the Tree (Resolving the Issue)

Act 3 is when our character learns your point of view—or in other words, the lesson, or point of the movie. The only question is, do they learn it too late? Or do they learn it in time?

The most important part of act 3 is the climax, the most dramatic moment of the film. If they learn the lesson in time, the character is able to “win” the movie at the climax. They get the bad guy, save the baby, marry the person they love. For example, take our warden. In the middle of the riot, the inmate reaches out his hand to save him, and in that dramatic moment, the warden, now understanding the value of human connection, takes the hand and survives.

Or consider our football player. It’s the final game of the season, the state championship is on the line, and he turns to his team and tells them no matter what happens, win or lose, they’ll always have each other. This inspired pep talk revs them up, propelling the team to win the game together.

But if they learn the lesson too late, like our inventor does as she walks home alone clutching her award, the character “loses” the movie at the climax—they don’t get the bad guy, they don’t save the baby, they don’t marry the person they love—and only after this loss do they experience a change of heart.

After the climax, the audience needs a chance to see what the character’s life looks like now, after they either won the movie or lost the movie. This last part is called the resolution.

Bringing the Acts Together

When you put all of the above elements together, this is what it looks like:

Now try it for yourself. Take your point-of-view sentence, your emotional journey sentence, and the character who is going to tell the story, and ask yourself the following questions:

1.Do they win or lose the movie?

2.What are they like before the movie starts (status quo)? What happens that makes them choose to start the journey of the movie (inciting incident)?

3.What is the moment when they realize they have to change what they’re doing (midpoint, if they win the movie), or what is the scene where they think they have won the movie, only to be wrong (midpoint, if they lose the movie)?

4.How do they ultimately win or lose the movie (climax)?

5.What does the character’s world look like afterward (resolution)?

You now have your basic story points to tell your story, a character to tell it through, and a reason why you’re telling it.

Connecting the Dots

You may be wondering how you get from one of your story points to the next, which is where the rule of “Therefore/But” comes in handy. Stories always have to have causation. Simply put, one action has to cause the next occurrence. It looks like this:

A Forward Causation Chain: A happens. Therefore B happens. Because B happens, therefore C happens. But D happens, therefore E happens.

A Backward Causation Chain: D happened. In order for D to happen, C had to happen. In order for C to happen, B had to happen. And so on . . .

Line up your inciting incident and your climax, and ask yourself, How does my character get from A to Z? Tell the story using the Therefore/But rule. And now your story has causation.

Storytelling in Film

Screenwriting is first and foremost a visual medium. When you go to live theater, the audience is sitting very far away, and the characters’ faces are very small, therefore the use of words and dialogue is the best way to tell the story. But in a movie theater, or on a home screen, fewer words are needed because we have the benefit of seeing everything a character is thinking and feeling by their expressions, body language, and other environmental clues.

Show Don’t Tell and Subtext

In screenwriting, the “show don’t tell” principle is literal. The subtext is what offers us the underlying information beneath the action we are witnessing. Instead of having a character say exactly what they mean, lead an audience to infer what the character is trying to say through their choices. Here’s what that looks like in practice:

A script with no visual storytelling and no subtext:

INT. KITCHEN - DAY Sarah is so mad at Anthony for cheating on her.

SARAH I’m so mad at you.

ANTHONY

Because I cheated on you?

A script where we show instead of tell, and use subtext: INT. KITCHEN - DAY

Sarah SLAMS the kitchen cabinets. She pulls out a POT and DROPS it in the sink to fill it with water. Anthony watches.

ANTHONY Are you OK?

SARAH

Yes, I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?

As you begin to write your story, always ask yourself the following:

1.How can I tell this part of the story in pictures instead of words?

2.How can my character use fewer words to communicate what they’re thinking or feeling?

3.How can my character use words to communicate the opposite of what they’re thinking or feeling?

Finally, remember that films used to be called moving pictures. If you make sure that something or someone is moving in every scene, you will literally keep the story moving forward.

Formatting Your Screenplay

Screenplays are written to communicate on the page what is happening on the screen. We start every screenplay with FADE IN.

Each new scene in a screenplay is introduced with where and when it is happening. This is called a slugline, and it is written in all capital letters. The slugline is followed by action that describes the world in the scene a little more, offering the details we need to imagine the screen.

In order to re-create the experience of watching the movie on the page, screenwriters will often capitalize words that we need to draw your attention to: new characters, sounds, or really important details.

Here are three examples of what that looks like:

EXT. FOOTBALL STADIUM - DAY

It is packed with PEOPLE. It is game day, and the energy is intense.

INT. INVENTOR’S OFFICE - NIGHT

A MAN meticulously pours a VIAL of liquid into another one.

EXT. SMALL MEDIEVAL VILLAGE - MORNING

A YOUNG PRINCE (5, stubborn) plays a game of pick up sticks with a PEASANT BOY (5, kind) on a cobblestone street.

When characters speak, their dialogue runs down the middle of the page like this:

EXT. FOOTBALL STADIUM, SIDELINES - MOMENTS LATER

The COACH (55) looks down at a clipboard as his TEAM gathers around him.

COACH

Alright, listen up everyone.

PLAYER

You got it, Coach.

COACH

We’re going to run the ball, we got no choice.

PLAYER

But, Coach—

COACH

No buts.

The Coach blows his WHISTLE. They break the HUDDLE.

Remember that screenwriting is about simplicity and clarity. I don’t need to know everything. I just need to know enough to be able to imagine it. Your job is more like that of an impressionist painter than a novelist—to sketch an impression of what the scene feels like.

For example, in this version I describe everything:

EXT. BAR - DAY

The road is dusty and long leading up to the bar. There are seven parking spots, one handicapped spot. The front door is made of dark brown wood, and is always closed. There are two windows on either side of the door, with signs in the windows, describing the beer they have on special, and those signs are only partially lit up, because they don’t have the money to fix them.

But in this version, I create an impression for what I want you to feel:

EXT. BAR - DAY

A dusty parking lot. A sign flashes in the window: —UD LIGHT. The door handle sticks.

The Writing Process

Here are all the pieces you have put together to be able to start telling your story:

1.Your point-of-view sentence

2.The emotional journey of your character

3.Your character, and the world of their story

4.The inciting incident, midpoint, and climax of your story

5.The causal chain that connects each of those story points

You’re ready to write FADE IN. As you write, keep the following guiding questions in mind:

1.How do I tell this story in pictures?

2.What pictures are going to make my audience feel what I want them to feel?

3.Is the story always moving forward?

And finally, remember your why. Remember that it is our responsibility to share—you never know who might need your one particular tale.

On Graphic Narrative

Andy Warner

Introduction to Graphic Narrative

Comics are a storytelling medium, which means that they can be applied to any kind of story you want to tell or genre you want to work in. Maybe you want to tell fantastic fiction about superheroes, or maybe you want to tell a serious memoir about your childhood. Comics can do both these things, and anything in between. They are a way to tell funny or goofy stories, as well as profoundly serious ones. I do a lot of different things in my life, but all of them involve nonfiction comics. I find that comics are a powerful way to create narratives because of their visual aspect, which absorbs the reader and makes them actively participate. As a creator of comics, you can guide this process and tell the stories you want to tell with deep emotion or witty humor.

Warm-Up Exercises

Before starting, one thing that can help with any comic project is a quick warm-up to get your hand drawing. Here are four simple ones you can try that will also practice good cartooning skills:

•Targeting body poses: Pick one or two attitudes from this list and draw only a body to match: pompous, uneasy, impatient, aggressive, tired, humble, stubborn. No facial expressions—just a nose and ears to show head position. No words. See if a partner can guess what attitude you’re trying to depict. Feel free to add other attitudes to the list.

•Targeting facial expressions: Pick two attitudes from this list and draw only a face to match each: confident, uncertain, frustrated, emotionally hurt, flirtatious, mischievous, tired, annoyed, concentrating intently, overjoyed. Nothing below the neck.

•Jam comics: Get together with some friends and each draw out four panels on a sheet of paper. Fill in one of the panels, then pass it to the left. Fill in the next panel in the comic you receive and continue, trying to create a collaborative narrative, until all panels are filled. Keep going if you want to by adding more panels and participants.

•Guess the mood: Choose one of the following moods: abandoned, serene, forbidding, welcoming, official, futuristic, creepy, boring, comfy. Then make a single-page six-panel comic showing fragments of a place based on that mood. No characters and no words, just images from a setting, real or imaginary, that you think expresses the mood.

•

A Quick Guide to How Comics Work

Comics use a simple visual language to tell a story to their reader using a page or screen. Narration and internal monologues go in caption boxes. Speech goes in word balloons, and thoughts go in thought bubbles. You can make characters shout or whisper by changing the shape of their word balloons or size of their dialogue. The reader will always read left to right, starting at the top left corner of the page and moving through panels in a Z shape.

Designing with the Rule of 3

You don’t have to draw well to make comics. Complicated or polished art just makes for something pretty to look at, not necessarily good comics. Some of the most popular webcomics in the world are drawn with stick figures. What you do need is a solid sense of design. Consider where the reader will look on your page and in your panels and how you can shape that by catching their eye. Don’t make things too complicated, and consider where to leave empty spaces in your work, which will let readers pause. One of the easiest graphic design tricks to master that will make your comics look nice is the Rule of 3.

Page Layouts

The use of grids is also important in considering how to break your pages down into panels. Just like the Rule of 3, this makes things look nice to the reader. You can further divide up the grids to get more interesting layouts. The longer and bigger a panel is, the more time a reader will spend with it, and the reader will also perceive the panel as taking up more time in the story.

Panels

Panels on a page are like sentences in a paragraph. You want them all to work together and to make sure they’re well balanced. Panels can be used in a lot of different ways as units of storytelling, and one of the first things to consider is their transition from the previous panel. There are basically five ways to do this, and you can use them to different effects.

Quick Design Tips

Contrast between dark and light parts of an image is fundamental to graphic design. Even in black-and-white comics, the eye can be guided by contrasting dark and white spaces in your panels.

For color, contrast, shapes, and shadows, you don’t have to adhere to the rules of the real world unless you want to. Comics often use a very stylized and simplified visual language. When you’re practicing, find one that works for your own style and hone that, rather than trying to get everything looking “right” all the time.

Lettering is everything! You want people to be able to read what you write, and nothing turns off a reader more than sloppy handwriting. Write out what you want to say in soft pencil first, so you know you have enough space, then draw the speech bubble, then the final, careful lettering with ink or hard pencil (unless you’re using a digital font).

If you want to make comics that have the same character appear over and over again, creating a head turnaround showing them from different angles can be a useful tool for keeping your art consistent. Try drawing some different emotions for the character so you get a feel for how their face works. After you’ve tried that with just the head, give it a shot with their body too.

Give It a Shot

Minicomic

The best way to learn how to make any kind of art is to actually do it. What follows is a workshop in creating your own four-page minicomic with a partner and holding each other accountable to the project. First find someone to work with, then interview them for fifteen minutes using a prompt. Keep notes as you’re talking to them. Here are two prompts to get a conversation going:

•Tell me a story about your mother.

•Tell me about the strangest place you’ve ever been.

After fifteen minutes, switch and have them interview you. Using your notes from the conversation, you’re going to create a six-page minicomic of your partner’s story. Six pages doesn’t seem like a lot, but finishing is a skill like any other. Starting small helps you figure out the tools you’ll need to tell longer stories.

First you have to figure out your narrative. Even boiling down just fifteen minutes into a six-page story is difficult, so think hard about what the best part of the story is. If something is interesting to you, you can make a reader interested in it too. Maybe it’s not even related to the original prompt, but rather the experience of talking to your partner. The most important thing in comics is the story. There are plenty of bad comics with great art, but only great comics have great stories.

Some people write a script out before drawing thumbnails, but for many others, the process of thumbnailing happens at the same time. Find what works for you. Thumbnailing is drawing things really small and fiddling around until you get it right for your story. This makes the stakes lower than if you immediately jumped into a final page and lets you play around with ideas before you commit.

One of the most important things to work out in this stage is the beats and pacing of the storytelling. Using too many words in a panel will make the reader skip over it, so think of it like poetry and cut it down to the essentials. Be intentional in your layouts. Will you use your page turn to communicate something? How many panels will you use per page and why?

When you and your partner have rough drafts, read each other’s stories. Tell them one thing you really like about it. Then make one requested change that you think would make the story better. Learning how to take and respond to editorial feedback is key if you ever want to publish your work.

Incorporate the changes and draw out a final draft. If ink or digital tools are available, use them, but pencils are fine. Fold another sheet of paper to make the cover, nest them inside each other, and you’ve got a minicomic. Congratulations! Trade it with your partner and enjoy each other’s work.

If you don’t have access to a copying machine, you can try other transfer techniques to make a small amount of copies:

•Do your drawings in pencil with a soft lead like a standard 2B. To transfer, flip it over, place it on top of a blank page, and rub firmly on the back of the top sheet with a hard but smooth object—the top of a pen works well. Then you can trace the transferred outlines in ink or hard pencil.

•Use a photocopier or, if necessary, carbon paper to make several copies at once. Many prisons allow people to receive carbon paper or purchase it. Law libraries and people with typewriters often have some on hand.

•Fully cover an entire sheet of paper with dense scribbles. Then lay the paper scribble-side down between your original drawing and a blank sheet of paper and trace over your drawing, leaving a faint outline on the blank sheet of paper. Do not lean on the page, as this will create a mark. Ten you can trace the transferred outlines in ink or hard pencil.

Diary Comics

If you enjoyed making short comics and want to get more practice, many cartoonists have honed their skills by keeping daily four-panel diary comics. At the end of every day, make a four-panel comic about something that happened to you that day or something you thought about. This makes you practice writing structure and drawing every single day and gives you a way to workshop ideas and styles.

Longer Projects

It’s generally not a good idea to start out with a big ambitious project right away, even if it’s a story you’ve always wanted to tell. Because comics take a long time to complete, your art and storytelling style might change enough as you work on the project that you’ll go back and want to rework old stuff at the beginning. And working really hard on something big for months or years, only to realize how much you’ve got left to do, can get demoralizing.

But once you’ve practiced on enough shorter works and feel confident, you should go for it. Keeping on track and holding yourself accountable for finishing it is important. Think about the whole project, work out how long each page has taken you in the smaller projects you’ve done, and try to project out where you want to be a week, a month, six months, and a year from now. When those milestones come, reflect on where you actually are, and give yourself the space you need to make changes to your project so you can get it done.

Most of all, have fun. Comics are complicated and interesting to make. And because they are a visual art form, you can look back at your old work and actually see yourself getting better every time you finish another page.

On Journalism

Edited by Jaeah Lee Interviews and Research by Kate Cammell

Chapter Overview by Jaeah Lee

All pieces of journalism begin with a curiosity about the world. That curiosity begs questions that we often must pose to those who know the answers better than we ever could, either because they’ve studied the thing or witnessed it or lived it themselves. As a journalist, my job is to ask the questions that shed light on what happened and why, show up (whenever possible) to the place where I can see the story play out, and then write what I’ve learned so that readers can understand it all as well as I do. Yet the best works of journalism not only tell us what happened and why; they also build a connection between the reader and the story, deepening our sense of what it means to be human.

This chapter is meant to serve as a practical guide to journalism, both the craft and the industry. We felt the best advice should come directly from journalists who intimately understand what it’s like to report stories from the inside. As such, the content in this chapter is largely based on interviews with journalists who are currently or formerly incarcerated, as well as those on the outside who work with them. They share their insights on the value of telling stories through journalism, on the reporting and pitching process, on working with an editor, and general career advice. In this chapter, you’ll hear from the following journalists, whose bios can be found in the back of this book: Keri Blakinger, Eli Hager, Kenneth E. Hartman, Victoria Law, John J. Lennon, Geraldine Sealey, Jeffrey L. Young, Nigel Poor, Earlonne Woods, and Wilbert Rideau. Please note that all quotes and interviews in this chapter have been edited for clarity and length.

It is important to introduce the work of Kate Cammell, who conducted the interviews and research and wrote the section “A Brief Introduction to Journalism.” Reporters and editors work closely together to take a story from an idea to a finished piece, and similarly, Kate and I worked as a team, with hands-on oversight, guidance, and edits from book editor Caits Meissner to brainstorm interview questions, comb through transcripts, organize the material, and eventually distill it into the lessons and insights you’ll find throughout this chapter. Before we dive in, here are some nuts and bolts about the journalism process to help familiarize yourself with concepts, approaches, and forms and to support you in your writing journey.

A Brief Introduction to Journalism by Kate Cammell

Acknowledging Bias

One thing that sets journalism apart from other forms of nonfiction writing is its commitment to documenting lived experiences while minimizing bias. Of course, this is easier said than done. Everyone has both conscious and subconscious biases. This is the great challenge of journalism: writing toward the truth while not letting our judgment and preconceptions get in the way. Journalism is a writer’s attempt to suspend bias. Being a journalist requires you to practice “empathetic objectivity,” or be mindful of the ways in which your own life experience can influence your attempt to understand someone else’s. Some forms of journalism, like editorial pieces, are based on opinionated writing, while breaking news stories rely solely on facts, rather than the voice of the journalist. Striking the right balance between fact, observation, and opinion can be a challenging process, and it’s an important one.

Types of Journalism

As is the case with poetry or fiction, journalism has many forms and mediums. It can be written or achieved through visual or audio storytelling. Below are some of the main types of written journalism.

•News lays out the facts and succinctly conveys information to busy readers. News stories appear in print, online, video, radio, and broadcast television.

•Feature stories are written with more narrative than news stories are. A feature story might explore a newsworthy event, a person, or trend. Features usually dive into the news in greater depth and are common in magazines. Like in fiction writing, a feature story usually has multiple main characters and a plot that helps drive the story. This type of journalism often requires the author to have a strong voice and writing style.

•Investigative journalism can be told in either short news format or a longer feature piece. The genre is used to describe journalism that thoroughly interrogates a person or people, a particular policy, or place, often centering on a wrongdoing (such as corruption or abuse) and harmful impact (such as discrimination, pollution). Investigative journalists often rely on court documents and data and can spend months or years reporting a single story.

•Editorial journalism describes broad genre-encompassing pieces that often rely on the voice and experience of the writer. Editorial pieces can be written by an individual journalist or an editorial board representing the opinion of a publication. Many opinion pieces are written by experts in a certain subject area, weighing in on a newsworthy issue. Editorial writing uses news and facts as the basis for offering the author’s perspective on the topic at hand. Examples of editorial journalism include reviews, news opinion pieces, columns, and criticism.

•First-person journalism, also known as new journalism, was popularized in the 1960s and ’70s. As in fiction, this genre relies on strong literary technique and the author’s voice. In first-person work, the author appears as a character in the story. While these stories are more stylized than hard news, they are also based on facts. First-person stories are similar to feature stories in the sense that both are designed to appeal to readers’ emotions through narrative.

Sources and Fact-Checking

One of the tools that help journalists limit their bias in order to write accurate stories are human sources—the people a journalist interviews when writing a piece. Most editors ask that stories have a multitude of sources with varying perspectives to help limit bias.

In some stories, sources remain anonymous, meaning they may be quoted or cited without being named. Readers tend to be more trusting of sources who are named, and largely for this reason, journalists rely on anonymous sources only when a story cannot otherwise be told and if naming the source will put their safety at risk. Think of a whistleblower, a crime victim, or a minor whose known identity could risk retaliation. In some cases, a journalist might use a pseudonym to protect the source. The decision to anonymize a source is a serious one. Generally speaking, a source cannot be anonymous just because they are worried about being portrayed poorly in a story. A journalist needs to verify the information they gather from their sources, anonymous or not.

Keep in mind that a journalist’s sources are not limited only to the people they interview. Sources can range widely, from court documents to books, government reports, diaries, databases, photos, social media pages, and other materials.

Fact-checking is another critical component of journalism. Whenever possible, a journalist must corroborate all information from sources that they want to publish. Fact-checking usually involves one or more people reviewing a story and the writer’s sources to verify all quotes, facts, and details. The process is a bit like reverse engineering, tracing each piece of information to its original source, verifying information with additional sources whenever necessary, and identifying any inaccuracies. Meticulous fact-checking is part of what separates journalism from other forms of nonfiction. Readers need to trust the information they’re consuming in order for journalism to hold power.

Now that you have some language and insight into the basics of journalism, let’s get into some inspiration. You can learn more indepth how-tos for writing journalism in the quick reference guide from the Prison Journalism Project at the end of this chapter.

Why Journalism from Behind Bars?

GERALDINE SEALEY:“Prisons are, by design, hidden from society. It’s difficult to be a journalist on the outside reporting on what is happening inside the prisons. Having that lived experience, there’s a base of knowledge there that anyone on the outside has to somehow make up for in their knowledge of how the system works.”

JOHNJ. LENNON:“I think it’s a golden age for prison writing. Look at how many people are publishing about mass incarceration and criminal justice reform. They have little agency. We do. I know people that have graduated from journalism school, Harvard, who aren’t getting the traction that I am. Not because I’m a better writer, but because of my ability to see stories where I am. I have access . . . [and] I try to tell stories and let the story speak for itself. It’s not for me to give a solution. I don’t think that’s my job, to be an advocate and give a five-point plan on how you solve every issue. My job as a writer is to tell you a story, and with that story, I hope it will start a conversation among people much smarter than me.”

Lessons from Justice-Involved Journalists

JOHN J. LENNON:“Logistics are the major challenge. How am I going to get my work in front of someone? Even before that, though, the challenge is, how do you get clean work, how do you get it out to an editor, how does an editor say yes, how do I get paid? . . . If there’s a creative writing workshop, get into [it]. If there’s guys that are trying to write, get down with those guys. If you’re solo on this mission, subscribe to the different places where you want to get published or do the kind of work you want to do. The problem is that a lot of publications are online nowadays, and the challenge is logistics and access. . . . If you do have somebody out there that’s accepting your calls, say, ‘Hey, can you set up an email for me?’ And dictate emails through them.”

KENNETH E. HARTMAN:“The prison system does not like being reported on and you have to know that going in. You’re going to get backlash. There’s going to be retaliation. It’s part of the deal. I think for a lot of people, they will make a few forays into it and they’ll get stung a couple of times and then they give up. The reality is that it’s hard and you have to be prepared that they may come after you when you say things that they really don’t like. However, when you are in prison, you do not surrender your First Amendment rights to free speech, to comment on reality and be published. Contrary to what a lot of people assert, you have the right to write about whatever the hell you want to write about.”

KERI BLAKINGER:“There’s more organizations that are willing to think about hiring people with a felony. . . . I’ve also found that law enforcement has been very willing to talk to me and give me the benefit of the doubt. I think it’s in part because of, not in spite of, where I’ve come from. But it’s also because I make it clear that I’m looking to be fair, that I’m not out to get them.”

Approaches to Writing the Journalistic Story

JOHNJ. LENNON:“There has to be some kind of relevancy to the story, right? The first piece I started for the Marshall Project . . . I was writing about this guy named Lenny, about this guy dying of cancer in prison. A lot of people talk about the elderly in prison these days, so that’s a peg. Whenever I’m reading something that sparks a thought of something else that could be a story, [I think] Could I expand on this? I should jot this down. I’m always reading like five things at once. It’s important to be well read. Then you apply your experience. I always love applying my personal experience and my observations to whatever story I’m working on.”

KERI BLAKINGER: “I usually have some sense of what the outline is going to look like. And questions like, what sources do I need to talk to, to make sure I’ve included all the voices that I need? Do I need an expert? Do I need some people who represent a specific demographic? Do I need the officer’s union? Think through all of the voices they need to hear it from, and all of the data points that they need to have. I think it’s also worth noting that some reporters think you have to include everything, and if someone is not making good-faith arguments, or they’re just blatantly misrepresenting facts or lying, you need to reevaluate what you use or don’t. So it’s not just about finding diverse voices, but finding diverse voices that are also truthful.”

ELI HAGER: “With longer-term projects, I start out by reading everything there is to possibly be read about the subject, reading news clips and academic articles to find high-level experts to talk to, so that I can really get the lay of the land. Ten, depending on whether it’s an investigative or narrative story, my approach would kind of differ from there. If it was investigative, I would try to get in all of my public records requests pretty quickly because those can take a while. Then I would start building databases to try to put numbers on how often that thing has happened. One thing before that is to ask, what numbers would I want to have in my story? And what kinds of anecdotes or quotes or records would I want to also have in my story? And then I think about how I would go about getting those. So, I think about: What data might really prove this point that I’m trying to make? What records could I collect, and what database could I draw from to answer that question? The same is true with thinking in advance about what anecdotes or expert opinions I would want to include. With a narrative story, it really is just identifying the narrative and all the people involved and interviewing them over and over again. And then it’s all about the writing. . . . With every story, the goal is to report it rigorously and fairly.”

VICTORIA LAW: “It’s about thinking of ways to get information to bolster whatever the story is. Like, how do you prove this issue? What do you have access to? Like, hey, I can go to the library and look this up. Or I can go to the cafeteria and copy down the menu and write a story about food.”

GERALDINE SEALEY: “I think a lot of the editing process happen seven before the writer or reporter sits down to write.... One of the really important things along the way is asking yourself—the reporter and editor, when they’re questioning the work—what are we not thinking of? How could our biases prevent us from seeing what else could be true here? I think it’s important to continue to challenge your assumptions, to question yourself and your conclusions, and test them.”

Confronting Ethical Challenges

ELI HAGER: “You have to see what the piece is about and represent your subjects as fairly as you can. We’ve definitely had to navigate whether to print somebody’s crime and their full name together, or not, if their crime actually isn’t relevant to the story. Or, if it is relevant to the story, then only using their first name or initials, trying to make sure that the permanent record doesn’t lead to the stigmatization of that person. . . . Whatever way you slice it, you’re probably dealing with people with a lot of trauma, and then you’re entering into their life and asking them to tell you about their trauma. And you’re kind of prepping them to go into it in detail, which can be very hard for them. And then, once you publish your story, you’re exiting back out of their life. You’re not their therapist, you’re not their ally in any type of concrete, ongoing way. And I think that can be a little confusing for sources we interview, because we do take on a very personal role when reporting some of these stories. And I think the way to navigate that is to just make sure that you set expectations very clearly at the beginning of the story so there aren’t any surprises later on. You say up front that the story is for our readers and it’s for reporting on how people like you have experiences like yours and how the criminal justice system works in cases like yours. And we’re trying to shed light on that, but we’re not like your lawyer. So, I can’t help you in your legal case. . . . I think at the Marshall Project, we generally don’t like to do anonymous direct quotes without a name attached to them because it’s dicey. You want readers to have trust and faith in what you’re reporting to them, and when you just kind of throw a quote in there from someone who is totally unnamed it can sound a little fishy and you don’t want that either.”

KENNETHE. HARTMAN:“There are laws on the books, and they come out of New York, they’re called Son of Sam laws. Basically, what they say is that you cannot profit off of your crime. They are really vague and kind of weird. Then California enacted a law that said you are not allowed to conduct a business while you’re inside prison. I actually got written up for that at one point along the way. But the way I dealt with that was that I just shifted all of my business dealings to someone on the street who handled it for me and then from that point forward I never had any money sent directly to me. There are ways around.”

JOHN J. LENNON: “One thing I think is important when you’re in prison and you want to be a journalist: I don’t think it’s appropriate to be coy about your crimes. Readers are naturally curious. If you’re writing a journalistic piece about, say, somebody who’s a prisoner, or someone who is suffering from mental illness, at a certain point you’ll have to explain the context. I think you could do that neatly. I think you can get in and get out—about what you’re in prison for, particularly if you’re writing a journalistic piece about somebody else. If I’m talking specifically about the crimes I committed, I just forgo my whole fee. I don’t take the money. The next question is, what do you do with the fee? It would be inappropriate for me to keep that. It’s not much money, but it’s a nice little wad that I shouldn’t be keeping, per ethics, or morally. If you’re just going to mention what you did and then talk about something else the whole time, like, that’s fine. That’s earned income, the exception to the New York Son of Sam Law’s reach (most states have some version of this law).

VICTORIA LAW: “I think it’s balancing so that you’re not just telling one side. But I do also want to caution that sometimes you might need to think about how reaching out to the other side might affect somebody. If you’re doing a story about domestic violence, reaching out to the person who was the abusive person in the relationship and being like, ‘Hey, your ex said that you abused her greatly’. . . you might be opening up the floodgates for more abuse to happen. So, weigh out the consequences.”

What Do Editors Want?

GERALDINE SEALEY: “One of the things we’re always looking for are the kinds of stories that you can’t stop thinking about. What is the thing that excites you, that enrages you? When we’re thinking about presenting our stories, whether it’s something that’s data- or document-driven, a reported piece or a personal essay, writing is about engaging your reader.”

VICTORIA LAW: “A great story is one that motivates readers to do something, like really pushes their buttons and makes them empathize with situations. Give people a sense of what they’re looking at and what the subject is feeling. Get as many details as possible. For example: If someone says, “I felt terrible.” Well then, “Can you describe what that means? What does terrible mean to you? What parts of your body felt terrible?”

Preparing a Pitch

GERALDINE SEALEY: “For a pitch, I think you do need to grab ‘em from the first line, right? It should be clear. It should be in active voice. If this is a cold pitch, an editor should be able to read your pitch and know something about your writing style. It should be well written and polished. It shouldn’t have grammatical errors in it. It should get to the point. And, for a busy editor who’s getting a lot of pitches, a two-page pitch is going to be overwhelming. I would personally prefer a succinct couple of paragraphs, maybe three tops, that includes your nut-graph: What is new here? Why should we do this story? Give a sense of the writing, a sense of at least one good example. What we’re looking for is something that we didn’t know about already. They should be able to read a pitch and say, We need that story. And based on what I’m reading here, this person can pull it off because they have this information. They’re telling me if there’s additional reporting to be done, and they’re telling me how they’re going to do it. You’re leaving the editor wanting to know more.”

VICTORIA LAW: “I think it’s really important that you’re not sending submissions out—or you’re not asking your loved ones to send submissions out—that clearly don’t work. If you can, read the media outlets that you want to pitch, because you don’t want to pitch them something that they’ve already just covered.”

Advice for Incarcerated Journalists

JOHNJ. LENNON: “You have to have fortitude. You have to look in a mirror every day and say, why not me? Why can’t I do this? . . . If you want to write narrative nonfiction, order Jack Hart’s Storycraft. It’s the best book, period, on narrative nonfiction writing, by far. And I’ve read Writing for Story by Jon Franklin, and Vivian Gornick’s The Situation and the Story. There’s really two sides to freelancing from the joint—it’s the writing side, and the business side. With the former it’s stalking the story, research, interviewing, and ass-numbing hours in the seat, or your bunk, writing and rewriting. With the latter, it’s building a network, a platform, dreaming where your story will live, then nailing the pitch. And grind, grind, grind. . . .”

ELI HAGER: “As a young journalist, you inevitably have some amount of imposter syndrome, like, how am I the one who’s reporting on this issue and reporting it to the public as if I’m some kind of expert? But what I learned is to actually lean into the fact that you don’t know about it, and when you call sources, be like, ‘I’m new to this issue, can you tell me about it? I really want to learn about it.’ That can have a positive effect in two ways. One is that you learn what you need to learn and don’t pretend that you know more than you do, because that will lead to you missing things. Secondly, I think it’s just a good way to approach sources, because people like talking about their expertise.”

KENNETHE. HARTMAN: “I read a lot of the higher-end magazines—Harper’s, the Atlantic, the Smithsonian. . . . I like long-form journalism. You have to read good stuff so that you can get a sense of what the good stuff looks like, because most of the time there isn’t a lot of access to that. Someone would say to me, ‘Hey, is there anything I can get you?’ and I would say, ‘Yes, get me a subscription to the New Yorker.’”

VICTORIA LAW: “Don’t get discouraged about rejections. Even people who are pitching on the outside, and people who have been pitching and doing journalism for a long time, especially freelancers, often get a ‘Thanks but no thanks.’ Or lengthy silences followed by ‘Thanks but no thanks.’ Or lengthy silences followed by nothing . . . Read as much as possible, even if you don’t have access to newspapers and magazines. Even if you’re just reading mystery novels or thrillers from the library, you’re figuring out how people write stories.”

Behind the Scenes—Journalism from Inside

Four journalists with past and present experience reporting from the inside talk about their journeys, best practices, resilience, and the power of journalism to create meaning for oneself, and the larger community.

On Working for and Starting a Prison Newspaper: An Interview with Jeffrey L. Young of the Prison Mirror

Jeffrey L. Young is currently a student in the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop program and first started journalistic writing in 2011, when the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, the state’s longest-running African American–owned newspaper (since 1934) offered him a monthly column called “Reaching Out from Within.” Young is now the associate editor of the Prison Mirror, a publication run out of the Minnesota Correctional Facility–Stillwater.

Q: Can you share a little bit about the newspaper you work for and your role within it?

JEFFREYL. YOUNG: Led by brothers Cole, James, and Robert Younger—members of the Jesse James gang—the Prison Mirror was founded and funded with the assistance of twelve other prisoners in 1887. As an associate editor for the oldest continuously published prison newspaper, I do layouts, editing, photography, and write about a range of issues, including criminal justice reform, prison policies, prison sports, and incarcerated people’s accomplishments and experiences.

Q: What are the differences, if any, in writing and editing for an inside publication versus an outside publication like the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder?

JEFFREYL. YOUNG: With the MSR, I had complete freedom to write about whatever subject I wanted to, and because it was an opinion column, I could say just about whatever I wanted to. And although I had no say over edits to my opinion column, they were usually just grammatical. My words were rarely, if ever, cut or changed. With the prison newspaper, I’m more likely to be subjected to censorship. Also, my role with the Prison Mirror is more than an opinion writer. As an editor and reporter, I have a responsibility to provide an opportunity for opposing views to be presented and to report only facts and statements of people I interview, not my opinion or conclusions.

Q: Originally, the intention of the paper back in 1887 was to provide incarcerated people a voice to contribute to prison reform, encourage prison literary talent and prosocial behaviors, and warn people in the outside community of the consequences of antisocial behavior. These days, who are the primary and secondary audiences for the Prison Mirror?

JEFFREY L. YOUNG: While we have subscribers from all over the country, the primary audience for the newspaper is the incarcerated population in Minnesota. Our secondary audience is a combination of Minnesota’s Department of Corrections (DOC) staff, state legislators, and the general public. We try to include a variety of information in every issue for all the aforementioned audiences. Prisoner experiences and prison policy issues are normally directed at legislators, DOC, and the public, while prison sports events and court cases on prison conditions are written with the incarcerated population in mind. Over the course of my three and a half years as an associate editor, I’ve received positive feedback from people in all our targeted audiences, including the governor’s office.

Q: Can you give us a nuts-and-bolts overview of how an issue of the Prison Mirror comes to life? What are the steps taken to create a publication from scratch?

JEFFREY L. YOUNG: We begin with an assessment of what events are taking place in the prison over the next couple of weeks and which editor(s) will cover them. These events receive priority when considering available space in the newspaper. For other articles, each of us have the freedom to choose what issues we want to write about. Information and images for these articles are gathered from multiple sources, including: in-person interviews and written correspondences with prisoners, prison staff, or people outside the prison, the internet (staff look up topics for us, prisoners are not allowed access to the internet), local and national publications, the prison library, and reports or studies from agencies such as the Prison Policy Initiative.

We then write our articles and plug them into the layout using the Adobe Suite programs, including Photoshop. We add graphics and photographs we have taken or stock images we obtained from the internet. We then review each other’s work and suggest edits before sending it to five prison staff members, including the warden, who provide their editorial directives. After those changes are made and we get final approval from the warden, we email a PDF version to the print shop, which is located at a separate prison. Prisoners in the Print Program print off a couple thousand issues and mail them to us. We then deliver them to the cell blocks (each Stillwater prisoner gets a free issue) and mail issues to our subscribers.

Q: What are three key pieces of advice you would give a reader looking to start a prison newspaper themselves?

JEFFREY L. YOUNG: If possible, have informal conversations with the appropriate prison staff to figure out concerns that you will have to address. That way your formal proposal will already have an answer. Prison officials will likely be concerned about costs, content, and staffing—which entails finding staff and the time for staff to supervise the project and police the content.

The Prison Mirror is funded by subscriptions and profits the prison makes from commissions on prison phone calls. Another revenue source to consider is selling prisoners photographs of themselves and using a portion of that money to support a prison newspaper. It’s also possible that a local news agency will be willing to provide start-up cost, materials, and mentorship or instruction. Try to avoid proposing that taxpayer funds be used.

As for content, in your proposal to prison administrators, promote the newspaper as a tool to acknowledge achievements and positive behavior of the incarcerated population, which will inspire other prisoners, and as a tool that will create an educational experience and creative outlet for prisoners, which has been proven to be an effective way of improving prison security according to dozens of criminal justice reports. A prison’s education staff are usually supportive of projects like this. I’d suggest approaching them for support and some form of editorial oversight on the content of the newspaper.

On Starting a Podcast from the Inside: An Interview with Ear Hustle’s Nigel Poor and Earlonne Woods

Ear Hustle is a globally renowned podcast about the daily realities of men living at San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin, California, and the journeys of those who’ve made it to the outside. The podcast is the first created and produced in prison and has received a slew of prestigious honors. The podcast is cocreated by Nigel Poor and Earlonne Woods along with Antwan Williams, and later the show brought on a third cohost, Rahsaan “New York” Thomas.

Q: You both started producing Ear Hustle at San Quentin prison in 2013, but it really took off in 2017. Since then, the show has been downloaded over forty million times. Can you share the show’s origin story?

NIGEL POOR: I started going into San Quentin as a volunteer professor teaching a history of photography class. Through that I became interested in doing more projects inside the prison and got involved in the Media Lab, where I met Earlonne. We were working on a storytelling project about life inside for the radio. We were gonna do it on the closed circuit station inside the prison, and then people from a local radio station heard about it, came in, and started training us because no one in there had any experience doing audio or radio. We worked on that for three years. We didn’t know a lot, just that we wanted to do it, so we put our heads down and started inventing a way. Then I heard about a contest that Radiotopia was putting on. We entered it, won, and that changed everything for us.

EARLONNE WOODS: There were 1,536 other contestants from 53 different countries. We made it all the way to the top ten, were interviewed and made it to the top four. We had to create three pilot episodes. This is when we really had to learn how to do a podcast, we still didn’t know it at that point. We ended up winning.

Q: In 2020, the podcast was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, the most prestigious award in journalism. It was the first time in history that audio work was given its own category. What makes Ear Hustle so compelling?

NIGEL POOR: Ear Hustle [is about] everyday things, overlooked things, not sensationalized stories about prison. My principles have been to tell stories I’m really interested in and that I feel reveal something about human nature, not about statistics or what’s right or wrong.

EARLONNE WOODS: I was in prison with a sentence of a million years to life, and a lot of people around me had the same. What we were doing, it wasn’t about me advocating for change, it was just us trying to figure out this three-strike story, or make people hear it, instead of just “Oh, you were a repeat offender.” The key to that story was finding someone we could put a face on, or better yet a voice, and that individual happened to be a white male who was sentenced to forty years to life for stealing forty dollars out of a cash register. The average person hearing that might say, “What the fuck?”

NIGEL POOR: That was a good example of talking about an issue without talking about the statistics or the policy, but the effects of that kind of sentencing. People really gravitated to the main character, Curtis, and it helped them be more compassionate about others like him. My other advice is to use varied emotions. We use humor a lot, and camaraderie. We tell stories that can be really hard to listen to. But we make sure every story is not just one note. Our personalities are part of it.

Q: How does one scout out a good audio story on the inside? And what are the ethics of creating a compelling story about prison for a largely non-incarcerated listening audience?

NIGEL POOR: We do preinterviews. There have been stories where we’re just like it can’t go anywhere because the person just can’t tell a story. Part of our job is to bring it out, make people comfortable, talk with them over and over again so we set the stage, create the environment where they can tell their story the best.

EARLONNE WOODS: A preinterview is technically an interview. You go in to record and get something out of the pre that you use in the story. It’s asking questions, and going back to listen, then figuring out what you want to ask in the future.

NIGEL POOR: We want to make sure they know what we do. We explain what the story is, what our process is, kinda like a first date. You’re seeing if this can go anywhere, if people are going to be comfortable and understand what they’re getting into. And then we’ll ask them some questions to see how well they can tell the story and what the details of that are. It’s all about relationship building. Sometimes people will come in and it’s not going to work for us—they have an agenda that’s not our agenda. We also don’t want to disappoint people. We have to be friendly, but also be in control.

Q: Ear Hustle was the first podcast created and produced in prison, but it certainly wasn’t the last. Now there are shows like Birds Eye View, Un-cuffed, and Pelican Bay Unlocked, to name just a few. Knowing every prison is different, do you have advice for those on the inside on how to start a podcast?

EARLONNE WOODS: How to start is probably the hardest conversation to bring up without knowing what the structure of those prisons are like. Some prisons are so locked down it’s hard; they don’t even have spaces for that.

NIGEL POOR: I can’t speak to the administrative part; I can speak to the creative part. Find something that isn’t just about you—don’t do stories just about your experience. Find a way to make yourself interested in the experiences of those around you, and that helps make it universal. When you do that, you make other people excited to jump onto your journey. You’re creating an experience for the community, not just yourself. Pretty quickly we got goodwill from the other people in San Quentin because it was clear we wanted to include other voices. We’re the escorts for other people’s stories. I love that position.

Q: Is there an Ear Hustle episode that stands out to each of you?

EARLONNE WOODS: There’s many. I would stick with “Bittersweet” because it was not only when I was released from prison, but the episode is about my nephew who was killed by the Long Beach Police Department. It was one of those episodes when I didn’t have all the answers from his parents, but I could learn more about what was in their psyche when they were imprisoned and lost their child.

NIGEL POOR: There’s one I will always love: “Looking Out,” about Roach, the guy who takes care of animals in prison. In some ways it’s my favorite because it was early on and it showed what we wanted Ear Hustle to be, a story of small details, and Roach is such an interesting, dedicated, loving, and frustrating character. It also has a lot of different voices, what we call “yard talk,” when we go out and ask a lot of people to answer the same question. It has great sound design by Antwan Williams, who works with us. I still feel proud and emotional when I hear that story because it’s a signpost of how great we were all going to be working together.

Q: Any final thoughts?

NIGEL POOR: We don’t put stuff out that we can’t really stand behind. We also have a big group now, editors, producers—it’s a real team effort. Something about me and Earlonne specifically is we understand and support [each other’s] strengths and weaknesses, and that makes us stronger together—there’s no judgment. I could never do this alone, and I would never want to do it alone.

EARLONNE WOODS: I can only say, do the work. Most prisons don’t even have a media center, so from that point it’s hard. If you’re not in a place that has that and it’s what you’re interested in, do what I did and get to that prison. It took me about six years to get there, but I knew what they had to offer and I wanted it.

Journalism as Redemption: An Interview with Wilbert Rideau

After spending twelve years on Louisiana’s death row, Wilbert Rideau had his sentence judicially commuted to life in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola. Here, Rideau pushed against the penal system’s institutional racism to become the nation’s first Black editor of a prison publication. Known for high-quality investigative pieces, the newsmagazine (the Angolite) became a sensation, celebrated by audiences both in and out of the prison world. Finally freed in 2005, Rideau chronicled his extraordinary experience at Angola in a stirring memoir, In the Place of Justice. For the past fifteen years, Rideau has shifted to working as a capital client life support specialist.

Q: When you entered Angola’s death row in 1961, you were only nineteen with an eighth-grade education. How did your self-education journey unfold in the confines of your cell?

WILBERT RIDEAU: The biggest problem with solitary confinement is that you’re living in a vacuum. Well, not really, you’ve got yourself. And you’re the absolute worst company in the world. You have all this time on your hands and nothing to do. I began to read—not to improve my self or to better understand the world or my fellow human beings, but simply to kill time. The only books and literature allowed us in prison back then were religious literature. But, anytime you outlaw something, an active black market is created. The book smuggling was controlled by white prisoners, so I started off primarily reading cowboy books, their favorites. When you don’t have anything, you read what you get.

I just kept reading and reading until one day I realized I was spelling words I never used before. I began to understand life, I began to understand the world, my role in it, and that I wasn’t the only person hurting in the world. I realized the gravity of what I’d done, was ashamed, and realized things had to change. Reading was an introduction to perspectives other than mine. Once you mature in your thinking, if you’ve got a shred of decency in you, you’ll want to try to right your wrongs. And there aren’t a whole lot of ways you can do that sitting in a cell facing death in an electric chair. That was why I wanted to write, to redeem myself. Ever since that moment of awakening, my whole life has been about redemption.

Q: What was the first thing you wrote that made you realize you could also use writing as a tool to create meaningful change outside of yourself?

WILBERT RIDEAU: I was looking for ways to make people understand that, yes, I did a bad thing, but I was not a bad person. The only tools available were paper and pencil. Back in the 1960s, the big question was why do criminals do what they do. I knew why I did what I did. And I had all these other guys on death row with me, so maybe I could explain the criminal. That would be my gift to society. I ended up writing a quarter million words in longhand on legal paper entitled “The Criminal.” At that time, prison was severely censored, especially death row. My plan was to write this, give it to my lawyer, who would publish it after they executed me. The fact that this would happen only after I was dead would evidence my sincerity.

Q: As a response to the previously segregated all-white-run newspaper produced at the prison, the Angolite, you started your own publication called the Lifer. Can you share about the journey of founding this historic publication?

WILBERT RIDEAU: When I got off death row in the summer of 1973, I was looking for something to do and the prison wouldn’t let me work on the Angolite, the all-white prison paper. The Lifers Association, guys serving life sentences, wanted to do a newsletter for their membership. It was one of the biggest organizations in the prison. With the support of other former death row inmates, I lobbied to be editor of it and got the job.

I was ambitious. The deputy warden had publicly explained that there were no Blacks on the Angolite due “to difficulty in finding Black prisoners who could write,” so I deliberately recruited an all-Black staff for the Lifer magazine, to prove the lie. I was to produce a newsletter, but I created a newsmagazine. It was about fifty pages. We typed it up and printed it on a copying machine in the Classification Department. All of this was done illegally.

The administration didn’t know about the magazine until it had been distributed throughout the prison. When it came out, Black inmates, who were the majority of the population, immediately adopted it as their magazine. I could have never predicted it, but I found myself an instant leader in a movement and a cause. I’d never led anything in my life. To be expected, I was eventually thrown into the dungeon, but Black prisoners protested my lockup, and I was released.

We published a second issue and were making money from outside sales of the magazine, which the Louisiana ACLU held in a New Orleans bank account for us. Unfortunately, that provided an official reason for the administration to shut the Lifer down. As it turned out, anything produced within the prison that earned money from the sale of it had to be audited, to be accountable. We were creating a product in prison, selling it, and holding the funds in an outside bank, beyond the reach of administration auditors. So we were put out of business.⁵

But I was undeterred. I began freelancing with a column, “The Jungle,” for a chain of Black weeklies, all of which introduced me to a larger audience outside prison. Among the readers of my column was a white probation officer in the capital city, who took over the prison a year later, in 1975, and, on his first day, visited me and introduced himself: “I’m C. Paul Phelps. I’ve been reading your writings, and I’m impressed—not only with what you had to say but with your determination to say it, even at cost to yourself.” He was impressed enough to see value in a censorship-free newspaper operation with me as editor to address some of the problems plaguing what was then the bloodiest prison in America.

Q: For the majority of your tenure as editor-in-chief of the Angolite, you had the warden’s permission to conduct a newsroom free of administrative censorship, and the ability to travel around Louisiana with only an unarmed guard. But from 1995 to 2001, the Angolite went through a period where you had trouble publishing the pieces you were most excited about and proud of. What is your advice on how to write and publish meaningful journalism, despite the circumstance of administrative boundaries?

WILBERT RIDEAU: Our freedom to investigate and criticize was unprecedented. That’s the gold standard in journalism everywhere, but the majority of what’s published—in or out of prison—is not investigative. So not having the freedom we had is not a reason to do nothing. You have to be flexible. When I hit difficult times, I shifted to more explanatory journalism, which also has value but is less threatening. You can’t help anyone if you’re dead or out of business. So, meaningful journalism requires, first and foremost, that you continue to function.

Q: In your memoir you wrote, “I refused to remain powerless in a jungle where only power mattered.” Arguably, writing without censorship gave you the power to control your own narrative, and build a new sense of identity.

WILBERT RIDEAU: It did more than that. It enabled me to build a network of relationships inside the prison world that served to support what we were doing, simply by giving others a new sense of identity and self-worth. Understand, the people we served were at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, their existences unrecognized. Prisoners had never had their name anywhere except in relation to a crime, and that’s nothing to be proud of. The prison employees were basically the same. The only thing distinguishing many from the prisoners they guarded was the color of the uniforms they wore. Nobody goes to school dreaming of becoming a prison guard. They’re there because, like the prisoners, the circumstances of their lives conspired against them, causing them to end up in prison. And, like prisoners, they get very little respect from society. But that creates an opportunity for a publication that recognizes and serves the world of the keeper and the kept, humanizing those who live, work, achieve, struggle, suffer, and die in it. Do a good job of it, and they’ll support you. That’s power.

Q: Yet, you instituted practices during your time editing the Angolite that restricted the staff from publishing stories about their own legal cases and personal troubles. Why was this approach important to your mission?

WILBERT RIDEAU: The one thing you want as a writer is credibility, otherwise people won’t believe what you write. In prison, everyone’s seen as looking out for their own interests. I wanted [my writers to be seen as] people who are working on the publication, not personally benefiting from it. People have to believe you and believe you’re gonna be fair with them. Writing allowed us to effect things, but you can only do so to the extent that people are willing to listen to you.

Q: Could you talk about the difficult task of balancing outside influence while running the Angolite? How did you manage the different and perhaps at times conflicting interests and motivations of the administration, the incarcerated community, and your commitment to maintaining an ethical newsroom?

WILBERT RIDEAU: It involved a considerable amount of diplomacy . . . and fair and balanced journalism. Prison is a factionalized world, more broadly divided between “us” and “them.” You can’t be critical of one side and not the other. If you’re going to lean on prisoners, you have to show that you’ll also lean on employees. It’s a two-way street. But once you’ve built a reputation for being fair, balanced, and dedicated to doing good for the entire prison community and every group in it, you end up creating enough goodwill and support to fend off most challenges.

You have to be able to see both sides of an issue and come down straight. That’s how you earn credibility. For example, we were the first prisoner publication in America to run an editorial calling for real help for victims of crime. We did that back in the early ’80s, long before it became politically fashionable to do so. On the other hand, we were the only prisoner publication to editorially call for better pay for [prison] employees and explain why. Our inmate readers certainly didn’t care about either issue. We did it simply because it was the right thing to do. Of course, we won a ton of goodwill among corrections employees throughout the system.

Q: Many of the pieces you wrote had tangible effects like earning some prisoners their freedom and forcing the administration to change prison practices. Is there a story that was particularly meaningful?

WILBERT RIDEAU: There were a lot of them—we got people out of prison, we got rules changed, we got processes changed—hell, we got the method of death penalty changed. In fact, the photographs we published in the Angolite, showing the mutilated body of Robert Wayne Williams, who had been executed in Louisiana’s electric chair, were made available to the general media, but they wouldn’t publish them. The Columbia Journalism Review is the only publication—to my knowledge—to republish our pictures for the general public. Naturally, I’m very proud to have done what other editors feared doing.

The best things we did were the stories that educated people, changed perspectives, made a difference in the lives of others. I remember when Jane Bankston, who headed mental health services for the Louisiana Department of Corrections, visited my office the next day [after I was denied parole]. She wanted me to accompany her to the prison hospital. There, she walked up to an inmate lying in a bed and began talking to him. I soon realized he was blind. My depression was quickly replaced by anger at a justice system that would put a blind man in a dangerous maximum-security prison. I shook my head, looked at her, and asked, “Is this the reason you brought me here?” She nodded, saying, “I wanted you to meet Alvin.” Before leaving the hospital, I told him, “That son of a bitch [the governor] wouldn’t let me out, but I’m gonna make him get you out of here. You can count on that.”

I returned to my office, incensed, and wrote a story about Alvin Anderson. The Louisiana media picked up the story, the state pardon board got interested, and Alvin went home, along with several other needlessly confined prisoners.

Q: With the reach of work, many will be inspired not only by your writing but also your aspirational profile. But, at risk of being romanticized, it feels important to mention that being in the spotlight can also come with negative consequences. Did you find aspects of being highly visible in the public eye to be difficult?

WILBERT RIDEAU: The problem with becoming high-profile is that it is a double-edged sword: it cuts both ways. It will introduce you to people who’ve never heard of you before, total strangers who may appreciate what you’re about and want to help. But the flip side of the coin is that it can create a new opponent, who you’ve never heard of before, who hates your guts and is fighting your release because they feel you’re not being punished enough, that you should be either dead or suffering until you draw your last breath. Now, don’t mistake what I’m saying as a complaint. It’s not. Had I not become a writer, had I not become the editor of a magazine, had I not done everything that I did in the public eye, where I could be seen and judged, I would still be in prison. There’s not a doubt in my mind. Understandably, I’m always encouraging prisoners to take up writing. Writing is rich with promise, potential. You never know who’s reading you. Even the woman who would become my wife. She saw me on TV, on Ted Koppel’s Nightline, thirty-four years ago. And she’s the best thing to ever happen to me in life. I owe that to writing!

The Prison Journalism Project’s Quick Journalism Reference Guide

Yukari Iwatani Kane, Shaheen Pasha, and Kate McQueen

The Prison Journalism Project’s mission is to help incarcerated writers and those in communities affected by incarceration tell stories about their world using the tools of journalism. To learn more about their offerings, write to PJP (its contact information can be found in the resources section of this book). Here they’ve offered together helpful entry points into journalistic practice.

Getting Started

Most news stories are written in a style called the inverted pyramid. The wide section at the top represents the first paragraph of the story, while the pointy section at the bottom represents the very last paragraph. The top paragraph contains the most important information in the story. The second paragraph contains the second-most important batch of information. And so on until the last paragraph. A lede (also sometimes spelled “lead”) is the opening sentence or paragraph of an article. Its purpose is to hook the reader’s attention and establish the main information or questions needed to understand what comes next in the article. Effective ledes are concrete and focused, use active language, and avoid clichés.

Examples:

•Straight news lede: “The European Parliament voted Tuesday to ratify the landmark Paris climate accord, paving the way for the international plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions to become binding as soon as the end of this week.” (Rebecca Hersher, National Public Radio)

•Feature lede: “When they heard the screams, no one suspected the rooster. Dechardonae Gaines, 2, was toddling down the sidewalk Monday lugging her Easy Bake Oven when she became the victim in one of the weirder animal attack cases police can recall.” (Kelley Benham French, St. Petersburg Times)

A key part of writing a reliable news story is attribution—letting your readers know where the facts in your article come from. Aim to attribute if the information in your article indicates a point of view (that is, opinion or emotion), is subject to change (such as annual statistics), was not personally witnessed, or is not commonly known or independently verifiable. You can choose to integrate this information in the form of a direct quote, a paraphrase (a restatement in your own words), or a summary of the facts. Whenever you mention data, you must always say where it comes from.

Examples:

•“Johnson’s attorney, Jeremy Weis, said executing him would violate the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits executing intellectually disabled people.” (Las Vegas Sun, https://lasvegassun.com/news/2021/oct/04/lawmakers-pope-ask-missouri-governor-to-halt-execu)

•“A 61-year-old man was fatally shot by a Chicago police officer who had been responding to a call about a domestic dispute Monday morning in Gresham, according to Chicago police.” (Chicago Tribune, https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-fatal-police-shooting-20211004-c5vmjljrljgbxbxkmplaqjoiwm-story.html)

•The Bureau of Prisons reported that, in total, 43,249 federal prisoners nationwide tested positive for Covid-19 as of October 4, 2021.

Interviewing is about getting the key information that you need to fill out the “Five W’s and How” of a story while also building trust with your source. Think of it as a conversation with another person in which your goal is to try to get more information. There are two main types of interview questions:

•Closed-ended questions: This is where you ask a question that a person can answer with a yes or no, without elaborating. They are good for getting a straightforward answer, but they don’t really allow you to get the interesting details you need for your story.

•Open-ended questions: This is where you ask a question that requires a person to give an extended response by making them tell a story of what happened. This can help you create a scene.

Examples:

•Closed-ended question: “Did you see anything in the room?” Answer: “Yes.”

•Open-ended question: “What did you see in the room?” Answer: “There were lots of people dancing, bright lights, and tons of food on the table.”

Quotes are important because they can show emotion, bring a character alive, provide a description that brings a reader into the story, provide further explanation for a point you are making, or give an anecdote. A quote is the same as a soundbite on television. You wouldn’t waste space on video with a boring person’s comments. Don’t waste space on your print story either.

•DON’T put too many direct quotes back to back in your story. Let your writing shine through.

•DON’T make up a quote. Fabrication is unethical, takes away from your integrity as a journalist, and strips your story of all credibility, making it unusable. Your job as a journalist is to cap ture the reality of the story you’re writing by sharing the real words of real people.

•DON’T take something out of context to make it fit what you want to say.

•DON’T “massage” quotes—don’t make them “sound better” than they were originally said.

Examples:

•Direct quotation: “I couldn’t believe what was happening as I saw people start running in every direction,” said Jane Smith, an eyewitness to the shootings. “It was as if we were in a bad Hollywood movie.”

•Partial quotation: Jane Smith, who was closest to the scene of the shooting, said witnesses felt “as if we were in a bad Hollywood movie.”

•Paraphrase: Jane Smith, who witnessed the shooting, described the chaos of the scene as something out of a Hollywood movie.

Chances are you’re already a sharp observer. As a writer, you want to identify the most vivid descriptions that let you bring a scene to life. Here are a few tips on using observation as a journalistic tool:

•Take physical notes. Don’t rely on memory.

•Observe physical details of your surroundings. Pay attention to shapes, colors, textures, sounds, and smells. Is the bed unmade or neat with the corners of the sheets tucked in? Did the owner pad the thin mattress with extra blankets? (In an interview, your observations may lead to follow-up questions such as how they got the extra blankets.)

•When noting the appearance and mannerisms of people, look for details that reveal personality, emotion, and mood. Pay attention to their facial expressions and how they speak. Instead of describing a man as “mean,” describe the glare in his eye or his tone of voice.

•When noting objects, pay attention to brands. “Frosted Flakes” brings up a more precise image than “cereal.”

•Stories require action, so look for opportunities to observe people at work, at play, or otherwise interacting with each other.

How to Write a Q&A Interview Story

Q&As are an ideal entry-level journalism story because they require a good interview subject and thoughtful questions designed to elicit interesting answers that focus on a single aspect of your subject’s life or experience. Think of the Q&A as a written conversation between you and your interviewee. Write out a list of questions, then think about how to order them so the conversation is natural and not an interrogation. You will use only the best questions and answers in your actual story, but you will want to ask a lot more than that so you get to know your subject.

During the interview, you have to think on your feet. You might need to rephrase questions, ask your subject to restate answers, and ask follow-up questions that deviate from the original script. Finally, make sure you end with a good wrap-up question, so you’re not cutting off the conversation. You might ask your subject to reflect or look to the future.

Once you have completed the interview, you’re ready to write the story. The introduction should briefly (three to five short paragraphs) explain who the subject is and what makes this person interesting. The Q&A itself should not be a transcription. Choose the best questions and answers. You can’t change the quotes, but you can edit the answers so they are logical and clear. You may also edit your own questions to make more sense to the reader. Remember that your reader may not be familiar with prisons, so make sure that you or the interview subject is explaining key words or concepts when necessary. Finally, don’t forget to be curious and have fun. Interviews are one of the best parts of being a reporter.

How to Write an Opinion Essay (Op-Ed)

Op-eds are a powerful way to help change minds. Here are some tips:

•Take a stand. Be clear about the point you want to make. Op-eds are meant to highlight points of views that readers may not have thought about, so your article should try to persuade readers of something that they might disagree about.

•Start with a strong anecdote or a powerful statement that will make readers sit up.

•Incorporate personal stories. They can strike a strong emotional chord with readers.

•Attack issues, not people, and avoid name-calling. Unless it has been previously reported or proven in official documents, editors will not publish anything that could be libelous.

•Manage your anger. Your essay is most powerful when you can persuade someone over from a different point of view, and yelling, or its equivalent, rarely works. Facts and personal stories are a more compelling way to get readers to rise up.

•Write conversationally, not formally. Pretend it’s a letter to a friend.

•Keep your op-ed tight, to fewer than one thousand words. Some publications will categorically reject op-eds that exceed their word limits.

Pitching a Story

Editors like to see a pitch letter before you write the entire story, so they have a chance to provide input on what they would like to see included. Editors will also use the letter to evaluate your writing, so make sure it’s polished, tight, and no more than one page, if possible. The angle is the main theme or point you want to make. Don’t send a pitch saying that you want to write about Covid-19 in your prison— that is too vague. A better pitch would be, “I want to write a story about how I’ve been quarantined in solitary confinement for the last six weeks, and I don’t mind it because it makes me feel safer.”

A Sample Pitch Letter from John J. Lennon

A bit about pitches. In the beginning, I didn’t pitch. I wrote the story, usually pegging it to something I knew people cared about (gun control, college in prison), and submitted it with a cover letter. So you should work your way up to pitching. As we say in the joint, you’ve got to “get your weight up,” publish a few pieces, get a network of other writers and editors who know your work, and know you can deliver the story idea you are pitching.

Pitching is ideal, too, because once you get good at it, you can shoot them out quick. I may shoot five pitches a month out to different magazines before one lands. (I’m fortunate to have magazines reaching out to me for work—and when that happens, you have more leverage to write what you want and get paid well, too.)

To get published from prison, I’d say you’re really going to have to find your role in the story, find your voice on the page, be a personal journalist. You have to know the kind of pieces the magazine you’re pitching publishes, and there has to be a part of you, the secret egomaniac in you, that reads stories in magazines and says, “I can write a better story than this.” (Don’t say that out loud to anyone, though— until you got your weight up!)

How I Pitched and Landed a Spread in Sports Illustrated

Hello Sarah,⁶

I have your email from David Graham and since you have been kind enough to express interest in my story pitch, here it is.⁷ First a brief intro:

I am 18 years in on a 28-years-to-life bid at Sing Sing for murder (I killed a fellow drug dealer in Brooklyn).⁸

For the past decade, I’ve been building a career as a prison journalist and have been published in numerous outlets (see my CV or more at my website below). My latest for the Washington Post Magazine is linked below. In addition to my essays, I’m a contributing editor for Esquire and a contributing writer for the Marshall Project.⁹

My Sports Illustrated pitch:

My style is colorful and immersive and with this piece I’d bring the reader, Hunter S. Thompson-style, right to the sidelines of Sing Sing prison where gambling is big business.¹⁰ I’d describe the brokers and players in Fantasy Football as well as other plays like Pick 4, etc. I think this would be great as a feature around Super Bowl time.¹¹

The best way for me to proceed is to hop on the phone with you. Can you give me your number and the best time to call?¹²

Look forward to telling you more!

John

5Editor’s note: Two issues of the Lifer (fall ‘73 and winter ‘74), the first Black prisoner publication in America, can be viewed at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

6I’m going with first name here because I know David, referenced in the opening paragraph, has already told her about me and sent her my clips. She was expecting my email.

7David A. Graham is a staff writer at the Atlantic. He’s a big deal, knows a lot of people, and he was the first one to publish me. When I came up with the idea, I knew Sports Illustrated would be a great place for it, and David offered Sarah’s contact. Before I had such connections, back in 2013, I wrote an op-ed in support of gun control, using my own personal experience about how easy it was for me to access guns and eventually kill. I’d spent a lot of time polishing the piece in a creative writing workshop in Attica. I cold pitched the piece with a cover letter basically saying I’m in a writing workshop, and if the Atlantic ran it, it would be my first published piece. David published it. He’s been championing my career ever since.

8Here I’m briefly introducing myself. I don’t know how much of my work Sarah read, but I’m letting her know I’m in prison, this is what I did, and this is who I’ve become. It may come off as glib, talking about my crime like that, but these editors get it. In virtually all of my pieces I say I killed a man; I explain that I was a drug dealer in “the life” and account for my crime. Then I move on with the story, which almost always has nothing to do with my crime. If the piece does delve into my crime, like “The Apology Letter” essay I did for the Washington Post Magazine, I won’t take the fee. In fact, I forwarded that fee to a nonprofit. (It’s inappropriate, and against the rules, to reach out to your victims with a few thousand dollars garnered from your writing fee.) The New York State Son of Sam law is far-reaching, but the exception to the law is “earned income.” I earn my income, and pay taxes on it too, as a freelance journalist. Believe it or not, the law is in our favor. And I’m not so sure that it would have been against the law for me to take the fee from the Post. But it would have been unethical. I am pretty sure about that.

9To be honest, it’s probably going to be hard to get a glossy magazine editor to take you seriously and commission a piece if you haven’t been published in similar outlets. I’d actually suggest sending a polished draft to the editor rather than a pitch. I did this with my first Esquire piece, found Eric Sullivan’s name on the masthead, and sent him my essay. I worked on it for months before I did. It went on to be a National Magazine Award finalist in feature writing.

10So this clearly isn’t some elaborate pitch. There’s a lot of insider talk here. Hunter Thompson was a famous magazine writer, known for gonzo journalism, in which he’s on the scene, in the subcultures he writes about, and he uses the “I,” putting himself in the story. The editor gets all this.

11I have the access, I can spin a yarn—I mean, it’s a score for her. And I don’t need to belabor this. I can do it in a few sentences. When I later hopped on the phone with Sarah, I explained that I saw it as an explanatory structure—scenes (guys in the yard, talking teams, capturing everything), digressions (explaining how the bookies make the lines). I explained that I had a network and could get her the piece on deadline. Then I negotiated my fee. We settled on $1.50 a word, and “Inside Bets” ran at a little over three thousand words in the 2020 pre-Super Bowl issue.

12Lastly, you always want to explain to an editor that you are on the level, how working with you won’t be some palm-to-forehead logistical nightmare for them. Most of these editors are divas—they have no time, a slew of unanswered emails, and they’re not looking to mentor some prison writer. They’re just not. You have to really show them, with your work, that you’re on the level. It’s all about the work.

A Guide to Grammar and Punctuation

Chris Daley

Making Grammar Work for You

English grammar, like any set of rules, is designed to make some people’s lives easier. When you’re writing, those people are your readers. Of course, rules usually make other people’s lives more complicated, and in this case, the people with more complicated lives are the writers.

But you can make grammar work for you—by knowing about what’s called “grammar conventions” and making decisions in your writing with this knowledge. A convention is just the way something is usually done. I’ve been teaching writing at universities for over twenty years, where I’ve picked up some tricks for keeping track of these grammar conventions. In this chapter, I share some of these tips with you.

Before we begin, let’s take a moment to review the basics. There are nine parts of speech that make up all sentences, but not all sentences have all parts. If you are able to recognize the parts of speech, it’s easier to navigate the rules. To quickly identify the parts of speech, let’s see what Charles R. Butler Neto from the Howard University School of Divinity has done with the following line from the national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner”:

O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light, what so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming.

O (interjection), say (imperative verb), can (verb) you (pronoun) see (verb present tense) by (preposition) the (article) dawn’s (possessive noun) early (adjective) light (noun) what (dependent conjunction) so (adverb) proudly (adverb) we (pronoun) hailed (verb past tense) at (preposition) the (article) twilight’s (possessive noun) last (adjective) gleaming (gerund—verbal)?¹³

•Noun: a concept, object, person, or animal (dawn, light, twilight)

•Pronoun: a word that stands in for a noun (you, we)

•Adjective: a word that describes or modifies a noun (early, last)

•Article: a word that shows whether a noun is indefinite/unspecific (a, an) or definite/specific (the)

•Verb: an action (say, can, see, hail, gleam)

•Adverb: a word that modifies a verb or adjective (so, proudly)

•Conjunction: words that connect other words or sentences, usually and, but, or (what)

•Preposition: words that link to nouns and often describe a relationship (by, at)

•Interjection: something that a person exclaims, like hey! (O)

So, Who Are These Readers?

While it may not matter if your journal pages are full of good punctuation, following conventional grammar rules becomes important when you want to have readers.

It’s helpful to think about your audience as made up of three groups: 40 percent of your potential readers are just like you (they think like you think, and they know what you know), 40 percent of your potential readers are people you’d easily connect with, but they’re not like you in some fundamental way (different background, gender, race, education, first language, favorite team, preference for cats or dogs), and 20 percent of your potential readers are not like you at all, but they want to read what you have to say.

What do all these readers have in common? They’ve all been trained to expect certain things from a piece of writing. Some care more about spelling, some care more about verb tenses, and some care most about the rhythm of a sentence, but the best way to reach them all is to meet the expectations of conventional grammar.

How to Know What Readers Expect

Are you supposed to memorize every grammar rule and punctuation mark? No. But you do need to know which questions to ask while editing your work: Is this a complete sentence? Do this subject and verb agree? Do I need this adverb? Would a colon work here? You don’t need to know the answers to every question, but you need to know where to find the answers.

Dictionaries: In addition to providing the definitions of words (including grammar terms), dictionaries offer examples of how those words should be used in a sentence.

Style guides: Publications devoted to questions about grammar are called style guides, and if you were to compare a handful of these guides, you’d see that questions of grammar are answered differently in different contexts. There isn’t one right answer.

A good example is how to write numbers. The Modern Language Association (MLA) style guide, mostly used for academic writing, recommends that you write out numbers that are one or two words (twelve, seven hundred) as words. However, once you get to three words (one thousand two hundred and fifty-two), MLA says to write the numbers as figures (1,252). The Associated Press style guide, used by newspapers and magazines, says that you should spell out numbers one through nine only, and 10 and up should be written as numerals. The Chicago Manual of Style, often used for published creative writing, suggests that all numbers up to one hundred be written as words, as should round numbers greater than one hundred, such as five hundred and one thousand.

How do you determine which to use? Use your question to guide you. It is better to first ask Who is my audience? than How do you write the number 77?

Software programs: If you’re writing on a computer, word processing programs like Microsoft Word and Google Docs all offer spelling and grammar checks. Take advantage of these programs. The closer attention you pay to the corrections and suggestions, the more you can learn about grammar as you go.

Editors: Contrary to popular belief, many published writers don’t have perfect grammar. That’s why they use editors. Whether it’s from years of study or a natural knack, some people enjoy knowing all the grammar rules and correcting—they call it helping—all the writers in their lives. You may not need to look further than your friends, family, or mentors. If you don’t have access to any of the above, don’t sweat it for now. Focus on the writing. The only grammar truly required is what will make your meaning clear to the greatest number of readers. When your writing reaches a wider audience, chances are there will be an editor hanging around.

What Readers Expect from Sentences

There are enough grammar rules to fill hundreds of style guides, but some are more important (read: taught widely and consistently in schools) than others. These rules are meant to help correct the errors that will pull your readers out of your story and interrupt the flow of your work. What follows is an illustration of these expected rules using excerpts from the PEN American Center Prize anthology, Doing Time: 25 Years of Prison Writing and the Penguin anthology Prison Writing in 20th-Century America.

Sentence Structure

A complete sentence is made up of one or more independent clauses, which means a subject (noun or pronoun) and a verb. The clauses are considered independent because they don’t need anything else to make them a complete sentence. You want almost all of your sentences to have a full independent clause. Below are some independent clause examples from Chester Himes’s “To What Red Hell?”:

The steak [subject] looked [verb] good.

He [subject] walked [verb] through the confusion with a slow, uncertain gait.

He [subject] turned [verb] the corner by the store room and walked [verb] into the darkness.

An independent clause can have more than one subject or, as in the third example above, more than one verb. You can also have (usually no more than) two independent clauses joined by a conjunction (and is a common conjunction):

He [subject] walked [verb] through the confusion, and he [subject] turned [verb] the corner by the store room.

Without the conjunction, you wind up with a run-on sentence, also known as a comma splice. What makes the sentence below a run-on is that when the first independent clause ends at “confusion,” the sentence itself doesn’t end, and it’s not joined to the next independent clause with a conjunction. A comma doesn’t have the grammatical power to join the sentences on its own.

He walked through the confusion, he turned the corner by the store room.

If you find yourself with a comma splice, you can fix it easily by adding a conjunction. The acronym FANBOYS can help you memorize the conjunctions:

For And Nor But Or Yet So

He walked through the confusion, and he turned the corner by the store room.

He walked through the confusion, but he turned the corner by the store room.

He walked through the confusion, so he turned the corner by the store room.

You know from your own reading that not all sentences are made up of simple independent clauses. Let’s take a look at this sentence from The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

In my slow, painstaking, ragged handwriting, I [subject] copied [verb] into my tablet everything printed on that first page, down to the punctuation marks.

What we see in italics above are dependent clauses, which you can often recognize because they begin with prepositions (in, into, on, down to). Prepositions usually refer to a relationship between things (above, below, before, around, outside, with, and many more).

To become a complete sentence, dependent clauses are dependent on being connected to an independent clause. When dependent clauses are not attached to independent clauses, they are referred to as sentence fragments, because they are not complete sentences:

In my slow, painstaking, ragged handwriting.

Down to the punctuation marks.

Generally, you’ll want to avoid fragments and instead join them to an independent clause. Hint: you’ll usually find a fragment next to an independent clause anyway, and you can join them together with a comma.

I copied into my tablet everything printed on that first page. Down to the punctuation marks.

I copied into my tablet everything printed on that first page, down to the punctuation marks.

Subject/Verb Agreement

Many languages use conjugation, which means matching nouns and pronouns with the correct verb. When the subject (noun/pronoun) agrees with the verb, it’s easier to follow the meaning of the sentence. There are only eight pronouns we need to care about right now, five singular and three plural. People can choose which pronoun they want to use to refer to themselves, but there are still expectations for the verb that matches.

If all the verbs are in present tense, it might look like this: I run, you (singular) run, he/she/it runs, we run, you (plural) run, they run. Or: I am, you (singular) are, he/she/it is, we are, you (plural) are, they are.

Verb Tenses

Things get a bit more complicated when different tenses come in. Tense refers to whether the action being described is supposed to be read as taking place in the present, in the past, or in the future.

Present

I am

You are

We are

He/She/It is

You are

They are

Past

I was

You were

We were

He/She/It was

You were

They were

Future

I will be

You will be

We will be

He/She/It will be

You will be

They will be

It helps to have a good sense of how each verb is conjugated. What will help with that sense? Read out loud if you can. Television and radio have trained our brains to know how words are supposed to sound together. Again, knowing to ask the question Is this the right form of the verb? goes a long way.

When it comes to creative writing, another concern is tense consistency. If you want to achieve a sense of immediacy, you might choose to write in present tense. If you’re writing about the past, past tense is probably best. Changing tenses in writing—unless done with thought, care, and reason—can be confusing to a reader and jumble their understanding of the story’s timeline. The most important thing to remember is if you’ve chosen to write in present tense, stay in present tense. If you’ve chosen to write in past tense, stay in past tense. If you’re unsure if you’re writing in past or present tense, take a moment to figure out whether you’re writing a verb as if it is happening in the present or if it happened in the past.

When Readers Don’t Get What They Expect from Sentences

In the following excerpt from Patricia McConnel’s “Sing Soft, Sing Loud,” we can see decisions she made to follow or not follow grammar rules and the way those decisions create a strong sense of voice.

Partly, jailface just happens when you been under everybody’s heel too long, but after a while you learn to do it on purpose so you never let on that you’re scared or feeling pain or worry or sickness. What you do is, you freeze your face so nothin’ moves. Your eyebrows don’t scrunch together in a frown, your mouth don’t twitch or smile or sneer. Freeze ain’t exactly the right word cuz it makes it sound like the face goes hard, when actually it goes limp and you don’t let it tighten up over nothin’ at all, ever.

For the most part, all the subjects and verbs agree: jailface happens, you learn, you freeze, your eyebrows don’t scrunch, the face goes hard. Almost all of the sentences contain complete, independent clauses, which make for an easy read, and she stays in present tense. Two moments in the paragraph break the rules, and here’s why they work:

In the first line, “when you been under everybody’s heel” is missing the “have” before “been” that would make it technically correct. This omission has the effect of making the language come across more strongly as a spoken voice, as does “freeze ain’t.”

In the one sentence in the middle—“Your eyebrows don’t scrunch together in a frown, your mouth don’t twitch or smile or sneer”—we find a comma splice and a lack of subject/verb agreement. However, even though it’s technically correct to say “your mouth doesn’t twitch,” there’s a nice rhythm from “Your eyebrows don’t” to “your mouth don’t,” made more rhythmic by the missing “and’ between the clauses.

Sometimes breaking the rules can create language that is more true to the way people speak. Because the speaker in the passage above is addressing “you,” this selection can get away with some of the grammar exceptions that are allowed in dialogue (when people are speaking to one another). Especially in dialogue, people interrupt each other, they don’t complete their thoughts, they don’t respond to what’s just been said to them, and they use words and phrases that are known only to people from the same region (dialect), neighborhood, or family. You can capture that unique feel for language in dialogue without worrying about grammar rules. Writing with intention is the key—errors are not intentional, but knowing the rules and breaking them can be.

What Readers Expect from Punctuation

Using punctuation is expected. People expect periods at the end of sentences, question marks at the end of questions, and commas before or after dependent clauses or in a list. Punctuation makes your meaning clearer. It’s a helpful tool. However, we’ll see that while punctuation is expected, there is some wiggle room as to which punctuation you use.

Let’s take a look at this short excerpt from J. C. Amberchele’s novel How You Lose to note the many types of punctuation used in the discussion below.

“It’s a sycamore,” Mel says, and Beth shrugs and flips a hand in the air as if to say: Sycamore, elm, what’s the difference?

Question marks and periods are the least-optional punctuation marks. A question needs to end with a question mark. A sentence needs to end with a period (unless it’s a question like the example above).

Commas

Commas are used to separate items in a list, such as “Sycamore, elm” above, which implies a longer list, or this list from Jack London’s “The Pen: Long Days in a County Penitentiary”:

The cooks, bakers, and firemen were prisoners like myself, and they lodged in our hall in the first row of cells over us.

One of the biggest grammar beefs takes place over what’s called the Oxford comma. Many style guides insist on including the comma after “bakers” and before “and,” and this is known as the Oxford comma. The website Grammarly uses the example “I love my parents, Lady Gaga and Humpty Dumpty” to show its necessity.¹⁴ It’s unlikely the person who wrote that sentence is the love child of Lady Gaga and Humpty Dumpty.

The Associated Press style guide is a major opponent of the Oxford comma, preferring the Jack London sentence above to read, “The cooks, bakers and firemen were prisoners like myself.” It all depends on what you (or your publisher!) prefers.

The above examples also show another way commas are used: to separate two independent clauses. Note the commas come before the conjunction:

Mel says, and Beth shrugs

prisoners like myself, and they lodged

Commas are also used to indicate the beginning or end of dependent clauses. Here’s the beginning of the poem “Ignorance Is No Excuse for the Law” by Alejo Rodriguez.

From the cell ten ft. across from mine,
he told how he used to play chicken for money.
He played in bars where no other kid his age
was allowed to go, but he went
and the scars of cigar burns between his knuckles
testified that he won more money than he lost.

The comma comes after the dependent clause “From the cell ten ft. across from mine.” Note the other comma after “go,” which comes before the conjunction (“but”) separating two independent clauses.

Commas are also used with dialogue tags, which is the indication of who is speaking before or after a bit of dialogue. In Amberchele’s excerpt:

“It’s a sycamore,” Mel says.

A good rule to follow is that the comma after “sycamore” is placed inside the quotation marks. Almost all the style guides agree, which is saying something.

A comma splice is a good way to explore some punctuation options. Let’s take the sentence from McConnel’s story:

Your eyebrows don’t scrunch together in a frown, your mouth don’t twitch or smile or sneer.

If we wanted to “correct” this comma splice, we would have three options.

•A period and a new sentence: “Your eyebrows don’t scrunch together in a frown. Your mouth don’t twitch or smile or sneer.” This option would make a sharp separation between the ideas, which we may not want.

•A comma and a conjunction: “Your eyebrows don’t scrunch together in a frown, and your mouth don’t twitch or smile or sneer.” This option works, but it does call attention to the addition of the second half of the sentence to the first half.

•A semicolon: “Your eyebrows don’t scrunch together in a frown; your mouth don’t twitch or smile or sneer.”

A semicolon is a nice option when you want to connect two close ideas, but you want to avoid a comma splice. Just switch out the comma for a semicolon. (Remember, a comma isn’t powerful enough to connect two independent clauses, but a semicolon is, perhaps because it’s that much closer to being a period.)

Colons

Colons usually come after a complete sentence and are followed by either a list, interior or exterior dialogue, or a clarification. They can sometimes be used interchangeably with a comma (like below) or a dash.

“It’s a sycamore,” Mel says, and Beth shrugs and flips a hand in the air as if to say: Sycamore, elm, what’s the difference?

Here the colon announces Beth’s interior dialogue: Sycamore, elm, what’s the difference? She even flips her hand in the air as if to announce the colon.

The following sentence from Edward Bunker’s Little Boy Blue shows an example of a colon followed by a list.

Scouts Cottage also went on more “town trips” than the others: the Boy Scouts jamborees, parades, and an occasional movie.

Exclamation Points

Exclamation points should be used sparingly, mostly when showing someone is saying something with volume. Hey! needs an exclamation point if it’s being shouted, but if you add an exclamation point after I like burgers! it’s a little dramatic.

Quotation Marks

Quotation marks are almost always double (“/”) and they are used to show (1) dialogue or (2) that you are referencing something someone else wrote or said. The only time you would use single quotation marks (‘/’) is if there is a quote within dialogue or within another quote you are quoting. You can see this usage when I quote Bunker’s sentence about Scouts Cottage and town trips: “Scouts Cottage also went on more ‘town trips’ than the others: the Boy Scouts jamborees, parades, and an occasional movie.”

Dashes and Parentheses

Dashes and parentheses are another set of somewhat interchangeable punctuation marks. Dashes here refer to what copyeditors call an em dash (—). It’s the longest dash, as compared to an en dash (–), which is used between dates (such as 2010–2020), or a hyphen (-), which is used in a word like six-pack.

Sometimes one em dash is used, in which case its function is similar to that of a colon, and sometimes two are used, in which case they act like parentheses that occur in the middle of a sentence. Take this example from Jack Henry Abbott’s book In the Belly of the Beast:

It has not only been my personal observation but the experience of all prison authorities: the most dangerous prisoners—and I mean that also in the “physical” sense—are “readers and writers.”

If it’s important for the information to stay in the sentence, like above, where Abbott emphasizes that the prisoners can be dangerous physically, then use dashes. If it’s just some information that the reader could live without, such an unimportant aside, parentheses might work better.

Ellipses

Ellipses are three little dots that are used to indicate pauses or faltering speech. They’re also used to indicate that a word or words have been omitted from a quote, and so this latter use of the ellipses is less common in creative writing. If we use Abbott’s excerpt as an example and modify it with an ellipsis, it could read like this:

It has not only been my personal observation but the experience of all prison authorities [that] the most dangerous prisoners . . . are “readers and writers.”

The word that in the example is enclosed in brackets. Brackets tell the reader that I’ve added a word to the quotation to make the sentence I’ve changed read more clearly.

If you ever see four dots, the first dot means the sentence before the ellipses has ended. Here is an example of the four-dot ellipsis from “Making a Case for Rhetorical Grammar” by Laura R. Micciche:

Word choice and sentence structure are an expression of the way we attend to the words of others, the way we position ourselves in relation to others. . . .

Apostrophes

Apostrophes are marks that look like commas that serve two main purposes: to create a contraction (combining two words into one) or to show possession. Examples of contractions are

•do not < don’t

•should not < shouldn’t

•you are < you’re

•it is < it’s

The general rule of writing possessive nouns is to add an apostrophe and an s, such as the boy’s shoe or the cat’s toy. When the noun is plural, you add only an apostrophe: the boys’ shoes or the cats’ toys. However, when a word ends in s but it is not plural, it still takes an apostrophe and an s, such as the dress’s buttons or Chris’s pen.

What Else Readers Expect

Adverbs

Some people would say that adverbs (words that describe a verb or an adjective) are optional—that rather than use an adverb, you should use a better verb or adjective to show you’ve chosen the best words possible. Here’s a sentence I’ve revised slightly from Paul Mulryan’s essay “Eleven Days under Siege: An Insider’s Account of the Lucas-ville Riot” by inserting the verb and adverb combination moved collectively.

Each of the 632 cells had been opened, and hundreds of convicts, some masked and armed, moved collectively through the hallways like angry hornets.

The verb that Mulryan actually used in his original text (swarmed) is much more effective and doesn’t require an adverb:

Each of the 632 cells had been opened, and hundreds of convicts, some masked and armed, swarmed through the hallways like angry hornets.

A good rule of thumb is to write a draft and then reconsider each adverb, keeping only those that are necessary. For example, if you were to write that someone “jumped joyfully,” there isn’t really a verb similar to jump that has the joy built into it.

Prepositions

We discussed prepositions in our section on dependent clauses, but here’s one more rule. In Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style (2019), Random House copy chief Benjamin Dreyer addresses rules that editors have historically said should never be broken. One is “don’t end a sentence with a preposition”:

Let me say this about this: Ending a sentence with a preposition (as, at, by, for, from, of, etc.) isn’t always such a hot idea, mostly because a sentence should, when it can, aim for a powerful finale and not simply dribble off like an old man’s unhappy micturition. A sentence that meanders its way to a prepositional finish is often, I find, weaker than it ought to or could be.

What did you do that for?

is passable, but

Why did you do that?

has some snap to it.

But to tie a sentence into a strangling knot to avoid a prepositional conclusion is unhelpful and unnatural, and it’s something no good writer should attempt and no eager reader should have to contend with.¹⁵

Final Words

Rather than think of grammar as something that holds a writer back, think of it as something that helps a writer out—out of a place where they’re prevented from speaking to as wide an audience as they desire.

In her article “Making a Case for Rhetorical Grammar”—rhetorical meaning grammar that allows a writer to communicate their message clearly—Micciche writes,

The grammatical choices we make—including pronoun use, active or passive verb constructions, and sentence patterns— represent relations between writers and the world they live in. Word choice and sentence structure are an expression of the way we attend to the words of others, the way we position ourselves in relation to others.... How we put our ideas into words and comprehensible forms is a dynamic process rather than one with clear boundaries between what we say and how we say it.¹⁶

13Example offered by Charles R. Butler Neto, M. Div., Theology and Prison Ministry, Howard University School of Divinity.

14Ann Edwards, “What Is the Oxford Comma (or Serial Comma)?,” Grammarly.com, January 5, 2015, www.grammarly.com/blog/what-is-the-oxford-comma-and-why-do-people-care-so-much-about-it.

15Benjamin Dreyer, Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style (New York: Random House, 2019), 11–12.

16Laura R. Micciche, “Making a Case for Rhetorical Grammar,” College Composition and Communication 55, no. 4 (June 2004), 716–37.

After Grammar

Learning How to Transition

Emile DeWeaver

I started writing in Santa Rita Jail. The goal: publication. It took twelve years. During those long years of rejection letters from editors, I read a lot of what I called “badly written novels.” They angered me because I didn’t understand why I struggled to get one story published while these books’ authors published regularly. I struggled until I learned about sentence and paragraph transitions. From this lesson, I discovered a key—that is, what professional writers have in common.

Instructors often describe transitions as the bridge between one thought and another thought, the flow between one sentence and the next. I don’t like this metaphor because it misses the definition of a good transition. Lay readers don’t notice good transitions. Nobody ever drove onto a bridge and failed to notice they were suspended above water. Thinking of sentence transitions like bridges leads to transitions like nevertheless and therefore.

Such transitions are fine for college papers and business writing, because these writing forms focus mainly on conveying information. Professional creative writers focus on conveying an experience. That’s effectively accomplished when readers forget that they’re reading altogether, and they become immersed in a story. Transitions like nevertheless remind people that they’re reading, and they signal to submission editors that it’s time to place your manuscript in the slush pile.

I’ve come to think of transitions in the metaphorical terms of ligaments and muscles. While I know ligaments connect my muscles, I’ve never finished a set of curls, looked at my biceps, and admired my connecting tissue. Good transitions go unnoticed, but they serve an important role. In writing to convey an experience, subtle “ligament” transitions should be considered a tenet of strong, publishable writing.

Professional writers observe this tenet for every word, sentence, and paragraph. Brilliant writers struggling to cross the publication threshold observe this tenet most of the time. But most won’t cut it. How do you transition from most of the time to all the time? If you’ve heard the maxim “Writing is revision,” this is one important place to use it. Go over your last written work and ensure that (1) a transition links every sentence, (2) a transition links each paragraph, and (3) these transitions are ligaments.

In teaching myself, I developed what I call the echo technique to create unobtrusive transitions. In this technique, I identify a word, phrase, or idea in one sentence and reiterate (echo) it in the next sentence. Let’s examine the first paragraph in this essay to see the echo technique in action.

I started writing in Santa Rita Jail: the goal, publication. It took twelve years. During those long years of rejection letters from editors, I read a lot of what I called “badly written novels.” They angered me because I didn’t understand why I struggled to get one story published while these books’ authors published regularly. I struggled until I learned about sentence and paragraph transitions. From this lesson, I discovered a key—that is, what professional writers have in common.

The first two sentences show one way to transition: an antecedent-pronoun construction, where you identify a noun in sentence 1 to reiterate as a pronoun in sentence 2. I avoid pronoun ambiguity by placing it directly after the antecedent (the noun to which the pronoun refers).

The second and third sentences illustrate a second transition type: literal repetition, where you identify a word or phrase in one sentence and repeat it in the next. This may appear to go against what we learn as writers about redundancy, but this is actually a common transitional device. Open any book you admire, pick any page, and compare the sentences. My theory is that these transitions function like the word said in dialogue tags: they’re common enough to become invisible in the reader’s experience.

The fourth and fifth sentences also use literal repetition with the double use of the word “struggle.” The fifth and sixth sentences use what I call a soft repetition. Whereas literal repetitions echo exact words, soft repetitions echo ideas associated with the word. In my example, the soft repetition of “learned” is “lesson.” They aren’t the same words, but we can see they’re closely associated (lessons are, in fact, what people learn). The last two sentences repeat the antecedent-pronoun construction, and these sentences complete the paragraph.

I transition from sentence to sentence using the echo technique, and I do the same with paragraphs. If you want an exercise, I’ve listed the first sentence of several paragraphs below. You can practice by identifying the word, phrase, or idea in each sentence that echoes something from the previous paragraph. See my answers in the footnotes.

Instructors often describe transitions as the bridge between one thought and another thought, one sentence and the next.¹⁷

Such transitions are fine for college papers and business writing, because these writing forms focus mainly on conveying information.¹⁸

I’ve come to think of transitions in the metaphorical terms of ligaments and muscles.¹⁹

Professional writers observe this tenet for every word, sentence, and paragraph.²⁰

In teaching myself, I developed what I call the echo technique to create unobtrusive transitions.²¹

The second and third sentences illustrate a second transition type: literal repetition, where you identify a word or phrase in one sentence and repeat it in the next.²²

The fourth and fifth sentences also use literal repetition.²³

I transition from sentence to sentence using the echo technique, and I do the same with paragraphs.²⁴

It’s hard to pinpoint just one thing that led to my professional success from a prison cell, but here are some observations. Ten years before my first publication, I had mastered grammar, and most people admired my creativity. Five years before my first publication, I had mastered characterization, plot, setting, and dialogue, but still no publication. It was these masteries, in fact, that made reading novels with predictable plotting or flat characterization so frustrating for me. One year before my first publication, I read Theodore A. Cheney’s Getting the Words Right and discovered what I’ve come to think of as the basics of professional writing.

I took Cheney’s lessons and revised my unpublished novel and my favorite short story. By the time I finished, smooth transitions were part of my muscle memory. It felt like a natural next step to write what I consider my first masterpiece in fiction: “Superman.” When I received the acceptance letter, I clenched my fist and shouted at my cell’s ceiling. It had been all I’d wanted for twelve years, to be seen and acknowledged as a writer by peers who had also made writing their lives.

After “Superman,” I published a new piece every month for a year. When the owners of Lascaux Review started a second magazine, Easy Street, they asked me to be a monthly columnist. That column inspired me to cofound Prison Renaissance, a nonprofit organization that pays incarcerated people to share their wisdom with communities. These inspirations speak to another kind of subtle transitioning device that writing offered me: a set of skills that carried me from writing, to organizing, to running an organization, to getting out of prison. Those transitions, however, are another story and a different essay.

17Literal repetition with the word “transition.”

18This is a version of the antecedent-pronoun construction. “Such transitions” isn’t a pronoun, but it clearly attaches to the antecedent “transitions like nevertheless and therefore.” We could call this an antecedent-adjective phrase construction.

19Literal repetition and soft repetition with the word “transitions.” This word appears in the final sentence of the previous paragraph, and transitions are the governing idea/topic of the previous paragraph.

20Literal repetition with the word “tenet.”

21Soft repetition with the word “unobtrusive” related to “ligaments”—soft transition in that the sentence answers a question that arises in the previous paragraph: How do you transition?

22Soft repetition in that it refers to the construction of sentences in the previous paragraph.

23Literal repetition with “literal repetition” being in the first sentence of this paragraph and the preceding paragraph.

24Literal repetition with the words “sentence” and “paragraphs.” Soft repetition in that I describe what the previous paragraph says about what I did—that is, I use a particular technique to transition from sentence to sentence.

Re-Vision

Mitchell S. Jackson

Let me tell you how I got popped. Let me start with a couple of hours pre the arrest, when I was in medias res cooking dope in the house I shared—a blatant disregard of her wishes—with my then girlfriend.

By an act of Arm & Hammer legerdemain—it was my first time too; how’s that for irony?—I’d cooked up near double-digit extra grams of crack. Cooked it and cut it and bagged it and cleaned up and bounced out the house and stashed the sack of rocks under my seat and my pistol under the dash in my ’86 Honda. Common sense says I should’ve headed straight for the suburban apartment where I housed my dope, but on the contrary my sense-deficient self rolled to play hoop with my boys at an indoor gym. We balled a couple hours and afterward, though at that point I fordamnsure should’ve drove to the suburbs, my sillyass instead went and picked up this pretty young thing. We weren’t more than a few blocks from that pick-up when the cops swooped behind me. They followed a block or so and hit me with flashers the first turn I made. “Don’t worry, don’t worry,” I told myself first and my PYT second. Said it because I had a license and valid insurance and knew how to speak assimilated Negro English. Said it because I’d been pulled over riding dirty on occasion and had gone free. So I rolled my window down with that false peace, and no sooner than I said, “Officer, may I ask why you—” I heard his partner yell, “HE’S GOT A GUN!” from the passenger side.

Sidebar: The PYT is not the girlfriend and never is.

Now I’d made those sense-deficient sillyass moves, but I didn’t so much as twitch before the white men with guns and badges barked, “EVERYONE PUT YOUR HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM!” It was dark; it was raining; I was wearing an ever-obfuscating puffy black coat, and real talk, if those officers were having a bad day, had the wrong bias, or a nervous digitus secundus manus, I could’ve ended up the kind of headline that makes a mother weep eternal. They didn’t shoot (hallelujah!) but what they did do was order me out my ride and handcuff me and my pretty young thing and stuff us in the back seat of their patrol car and proceed to seize my 9mm Smith and Wesson and, after an avid search, find the sandwich bag of packaged crack hidden under my seat.

Maybe what they mean by kismet is the fact that the baggie was laden with those extra grams I mentioned a second ago.

“Look . . . what . . . we . . . found . . . here,” the cop said in slo-mo. He held the tumid baggie to twitching streetlight.

That was March. In June His Honor Henry Kantor sentenced me to Oregon state prison time. No doubt it was a sadface moment for me and mines, but on the other hand, if Judge Kantor, say, had one of those days, was overwhelmed with his caseload, or just wanted to send a message of less-than-zero tolerance, he could’ve turned over my case to the federal courts, in which case if I mattered enough, which I didn’t, I could’ve ended up this superdupersadface headline:

Dope-Dealing Scholarship Student Lands Ten-Year Prison Sentence

Instead I spent sixteen months first in Mill Creek and then Santiam prison. My last few months at Santiam, I scribbled on loose-leaf paper the first paragraphs of what became my novel. Puffed up off calisthenics (how cliché?), I paroled in the summer of1998, and whether I realized it then or not—and for the most part I didn’t—I began to revise.

Let me rap to you good folks about revision, or rather, let me rap to you about what revision ain’t: editing or proofing. Editing is finding minor problems. It’s addressing those minor problems with easy fixes such as deleting a word or sentence or copying and pasting a paragraph elsewhere. Proofing is seeing the work as static. Proofing is correction; it’s fixing a comma splice or a misspelled word or faulty subject-verb agreement—a.k.a. applying the rules of convention.

Revision Is a Philosophy; Revision Is Revolution

But revision, now that’s another thing. Revision might include editing or proofing but will always move beyond them. Revision is seeing the work in progress. Revision is seeing the work in context. Revision is recognizing the parts of a text and how they work to form a whole. Revision is seeing what could and should and shouldn’t be there and conceiving of ways to make it so. Revision is discovering what’s right and imagining how to make it more right; it’s pursuing a new way of seeing and being. Revision is a philosophy; revision is revolution.

Thank God I have learned to revise my work. Thank God, the angels, the saints, and a few heathens that I’ve been given chances to revise my life. The philosopher A. K. Coomaraswamy once said, “The artist is not a special kind of person; rather each person is a special kind of artist,” and that premise leads to my nut-graph: You can, no, you should, apply the tactics of revising for the page to revising a life. And that revision or re-visioning could alter what might’ve felt like or may very well have been one’s fate.

Second Gang Member Dies at Apartment 43

A gunman fired one shot and killed an 18-year-old man Saturday afternoon at the Towne Plaza Apartments. Kevan Hai Miller died at the scene with a gunshot wound to the chest.

Kev and me met freshman year during daily-doubles football practice. That season he was a starting star safety and I was a frail second-string defensive back. Kev was the one who talked courage into me when I didn’t want no part of our heads-up drills. Kev was one of the first to slap my shoulder pads when I lucked up on an interception during our last game of the season. Off the field, Kev was a bona fide math savant who had an easy smile and one those voices that made you lean in for a listen. Never knew what set Kev claimed, but most days the homie wore creased Dickies, Nike Cortez, a figurative fitted cap with no bend in the brim, and beaucoup red, a getup that let you know he was an aspiring or affiliated or wannabe Blood. No doubt he was down with gangster metaphor, though it never ceased seeming to me that he was playing dress-up.

Sidebar: He never even earned a handle, and it’s a natural fact that a gangster with no nickname is one of negligent lore.

The last time I can remember seeing Kev alive was the summer after we graduated from high school. We were in my basement bedroom and I was showing off the low-grade weed I’d bought from whoknowswho when my might’ve been clairvoyant grandmother crept up on us. Me, I was stunned into a gap-mouthed stupor, but Kev copped to it swift: “It’s mine, Mrs. Jackson. It’s mine.” My grandmother stabbed a finger toward the door and yelled, “You leave now. Leave now and don’t ever come back!”

But Kev’s banishment didn’t much matter. He was murdered within a half year.

How to Revise: Step 1

These days I teach writing to undergrads. But what if, instead, I was in a classroom facing the young live versions of The Homies? Picture me in lecture mode, a PowerPoint beaming on a SMART board, my notes laid out on the lectern. I’d open with the etymology of the French word essai. How it translates “to try” or “attempt.” How the godfather of the form Michel “Mr. What-do-I-Know?” de Montaigne named his grand collection Essais because he understood the primal need for revision. What more proof do we need than the fact that he wrote, published, and reworked them for over two decades? If I peeped even an inkling of affirmation, I’d try to persuade The Homies that whether they considered themselves artists or not, they should deem themselves essayists—always working to sharpen their ideas. And if that theory went over, I’d propose that furthermore they should consider themselves the essay itself—that they are, that we all are, in effect trial runs.

No way I’d dismiss class without making the point that revision is a process, without explaining that the first stage of that process is assessing content. This is the stage where you ask questions, I’d tell them. When you ask, who’s your audience? What’s your purpose? What’s your argument(s)? Who and/or what is supporting your claims?

One on one, I’d pitch to Kev that there’s another way of seeing. I’d tell him about literary critic Edmund Wilson’s claim that your wound is your bow. Whether Kev knew it or not, and it’s a safe bet he didn’t, his wound was his difference. Those of us who bothered looking could see it in the way he presented himself to the world, in the way he downplayed his superior brain, in the way he was seldom vocal in a group. If I were plying him to see the strength in his difference, I’d tell Kev how the whole time he’d known me and years before, I was embarrassed to the hilt about my mother’s drug habit, that it was my wound even before I knew to call it one. I’d tell him how when I got the mind to write forreal, I was petrified to speak honest about my life for fear that I’d be judged. I’d be sure to tell him how my work was weak as fuck because, among other flaws, there was much too much evading the hard truths. No way I’d let him leave without me telling him how, along the way, I realized that my harms were a resource, that exposing them on the page could make the work stronger, could make me stronger. The grown me wonders how things would’ve turned out for Kev if I’d persuaded him to embrace what set him apart rather than flee it, if he’d accepted the belief that things he was ashamed of might one day accrue him the most strength.

Man, 20, Fatally Shot Outside Club

A 20-year-old Portland man was shot and killed early Thursday after arguing with a man outside a nude dance club in Northeast Portland.

Me and Lil Anthony knew each other from almost the womb. In fact, our mothers were so close we considered ourselves cousins. One of my earliest memories of Lil Anthony—my junior by a couple years—was when he and I were in grade school and staying over at our auntie’s house. Anthony had an outie belly button that we used to tease him about something vicious, and this particular day, I duped him into submitting to the crackpot theory—not sure where it came from— that we could “fix” his belly button by taping nickels over it. Poor boy, you should’ve seen his face when it didn’t work.

The last time I saw my cousin alive was the day Judge Kantor dropped the gavel on me. The bailiffs marched me out of the courtroom and onto an elevator and off the elevator and toward a holding cell on the upper floors of the Multnomah County Courthouse. My head was dropped and my eyes were wet—wasn’t no fronting as a Man of Maraging Steel—but I perked up when I heard Anthony’s familiar voice yelling, “Cousin, cousin, I heard you was comin’,” from inside a cell. Lil Anthony, who, I should mention, pledged allegiance to the Crips in his tweens, told me he was headed to court to seek bail on his case. “If they give me bail I’m gone,” he said.

Sidebar: Lil Anthony’s gang name was Lil Smurf. He was the proud deuce of a dude named Big Smurf. And boy oh boy, that boy was supercalifragilistic with his gangbanging. For evidence I offer exhibit A: There’s a documentary about his life titled Killingsworth, that alleges at one point Lil Anthony, a.k.a. Lil Smurf, was responsible for “half the gang shootings in the city, either as the shooter or the target.”

The judge gave Lil Anthony, a.k.a. Lil Smurf, bail.

He was dead and gone six months from then.

How to Revise: Step 2

Revision is process, I’d remind The Homies. And the second stage of that process is Organization. This is the stage where you ask yourself if you’ve found the right structure, if you’ve ordered your ideas and paragraphs to produce maximum effect. The second stage is when you judge whether you’ve created proper transitions.

If the grown me could pull the young living version of Lil Anthony aside, I’d ply him to believe in another way of being, would mention to him Barry Hannah’s belief that you have to “Be master of such as you have.” I’d segue from Hannah’s advice into a confession: I’d tell my cousin how I admired his resilience—his and my mom both had long-term drug habits—in dealing with his mom’s addiction, how even though he was younger than me, I looked to him as a measure of what could be survived. For sure I’d tell my cousin how acute I have felt my literary dearths, would explain how minor I feel compared to writers who can claim childhoods as voracious readers, who learned Latin in grade school, studied abroad as bitty brainiacs, who earned a Rhodes scholarship, or fought as front-line soldiers, or spent Post Doc time as a motherfucking African missionary. Before we parted, he’d know of one of my strongest fears, the dread that all I lack will be obvious in my work, that somewhere in me there exists the belief that I’m an insufficient scribe. But I’d also tell him how the kind of childhood he and I had can bestow gifts, how the preachers and pimps and hustlers I loved and loathed as a youngster have become the muses that inform my writing voice, and how that voice has given me reason to believe I belong.

I wish I could’ve seeded him with that conviction, that I could’ve made him see that mastery might alter what might’ve felt foreordained.

Lil Anthony had much to master. He had a smile that made grown folks fawn. He was courageous enough to walk the streets (albeit wearing a bullet-proof vest) while there was a rumored hit out on him. True story, the boy used to stack phone books in his seat to see over the wheel—if that ain’t ambitious, you tell me what is—as he drove around the neighborhood in buckets on may-pop-at-any-time tires. With his resilience, his charm, his courage, his ambition, he could’ve been just about anything he wanted—CEO, comic, a damn good motivational speaker . . . and I wish I could’ve seeded him with that conviction, that I could’ve made him see that mastery might alter what might’ve felt foreordained.

Man Gets 17 Years in 1997 Ambush Killing

_________________ fails to get the judge to allow him to change his pleas.

Me and my boy Black—he was a grade above me—attended the same Catholic school. From the jump, I admired him because he was a Prison Ball braveheart—he’d catch a speedball toeing the line or blast you almost off your feet from a good distance—and he was the best basketball player in the school. As a matter fact, Black was the guy who took me to join my first basketball team, and by that I mean walked me to the gym, introduced me to the coach, and waited to make sure I didn’t punk out and jet before tryouts. He pulled the same big brother move when it came to me playing Little League baseball. Black and I went to different middle schools but wound up attending the same magnet high school. My freshman year, I was an astonished fanboy cheering from the stands while Black as a sophomore lived out what in those days was my most coveted dream: He was starting and playing big minutes in the state basketball tournament. It was him squeaking across the Coliseum floor, stealing balls, hustling for steals, and scoring mid-range jumpers and dipsey-do layups, him who posed post-game with the championship trophy.

One of my last memories of Black and me as freedmen on streets was when we were both in our twenties and dealing dope. He called me over one night and when his girlfriend let me in, I saw Black in his living room, shirtless in hoop shorts with scrapes everywhere. “Goddamn bro, what happened to you?” I said. Black told me about an episode the night before where he’d had a bad trip on ecstasy, ran out of his clothes into the street, and after being tackled (hence the scrapes) ended up in detox. “Bro, I’m only telling you this because I love you,” he said. “Don’t ever fuck with that shit.”

Black was damn near invincible to me back then. Not only had he won that state championship as a fearless guard, on the streets— Black was a Crip, a fact I’m mentioning since I mentioned what the others claimed—he seemed afraid of no one. There were stories galore of Black’s panache for doling natural ass whoopings to foes of all height and girth. Like the legend of him putting hands on Fat Fred (RIP), a guy who—no hype—was thrice Black’s weight. The night in his apartment sticks with me because it was the first and only time he exposed a weakness to me. Memorable too because it was one time he admitted in word what he’d showed me in deed: that his care for me was beyond friend for friend.

How to Revise: Step 3

The third stage of revision is Expression, I’d tell The Homies. This is where you start to consider your voice, or in other words, the way you say what you need to say. This is the place to make more specific choices of style, where you choose diction, where you make conscious choices about how to effect the tone you want.

Sidebar: To date I’ve visited Black once since he’s been locked down. And that one time was to film him in prison. Those facts make me no small part of irredeemable fraud.

Black and I have exchanged a few letters, which doesn’t make up for my fraudulence but does present a chance for me to tell him about this philosophy I cribbed from a once-upon-a-time writing mentor of mine named Gordon Lish: “What comes next is always behind you.” Lish calls the method recursion. What I plan to tell Black is how much of a boon it was in the late stages of editing my novel, how there was this scene—we could call it the climax—toward the end that I kept reading and reading and wanting to be right when I knew in my heart it was wrong. For days I read and re-read the scenes that preceded it and asked myself, “what’s next, what’s next?” Then one day I recalled that idea of moving forward by looking back, and ended up writing a last scene—a damn good one if you ask me—based on one of the first scenes in the book.

My big homie—no, my big brother—comes home soon, and I hope takes a long look back as well. It might be tough. There’s beaucoup benefits, especially when you’re locked down, to disremembering, much profit in focusing on what’s to come. But I hope Black at least tries recursion, that he conjures how brave he was, and that that courage might serve him if ever a job search protracts, if ever he needs to dismiss the lure of the dope sack, if ever he needs to turn a cheek to an old foe. I hope Black can resurrect the grit it took to win it all, the feeling of being hero to us freshmen and JV plebes. Should my friend—no, my big brother—find himself becoming too much of the self he’d rather not be, I pray he recalls the compassion that made him warn me from danger.

Beyond Revision?

It was old Nabokov who said his “pencils outlast their erasers,” which was a clever way of hinting at the level of hope one needs to revise. Hope for more and for better is at the heart of revision. Now, I’m not trying to get all dour on you, but I have to say this: Revision don’t work so well at preempting first trouble. In fact, it’s liable only to work—you’ve got to endure some serious strife to have a real sense of its efficacy—on those who’ve been baptized by grave moral or mortal grief. And let me say this too: As much as I believe revision could’ve helped my homeboys, will help my homeboy, I know deep down that some dudes are beyond it. Some dudes, the best you can do is stay the fuck out their way. Where I’m from, these dudes got a raison d’être nada and a handle that lets you know what they’re about: Pistol, Menace, Stitches, Killa. They anesthetize from wake-up and flaunt yield-colored sclera and super-scorched lower lips. These dudes have kids they don’t see and parents they don’t love and mugshots galore and ain’t worried about boxes—neither coffins nor cells. You can bet they own knife and/or bullet wounds and wear hats dipped low and sport tattoo tears on their cheeks and affiliations and RIPs on their necks and arms and bruised knuckles and don’t bother with the grime under their jagged nails. But check it, you can most know them by how slow they move—hurry implies a kind of hope, and by how they negotiate the world, by which I mean how, no matter their size, they claim a preponderance of physical and psychic space; they claim it and damn near dare you to enter it. Double dare you so they can show you what they’re made of. Or rather what they’re made for, which is the crime that will make them most infamous. Trust me on this, please, these nefarious dudes live by credos that push them far outside peace and revision and prayer and any attempt to soften their slow-ticking atheist hearts. As evidence I offer exhibit B: I was once in a small crowd watching two guys argue, one who I knew to be the kind of guy I mentioned a second ago. “You don’t want it with me,” he told his foe, with what seemed every fiber in him. “I will bring violence to your life.”

Hope for more and for better is at the heart of revision.

Wannabe Novelist Seeks Benefactors

That was my actual headline. They ran it right before I moved to New York for grad school. This was a couple of years after I paroled, and I was ecstatic about the chances I had received to re-envision my life. At the time they ran this, though, I could still be seen bending corners in my money green ’94 Lexus, could still be seen decked in repeat-print Versace jeans, gleaming Air Force One Nikes, and spanking new white t-shirts never to be worn twice. Those days, no small part of my public self was based on the fact of me being a former dope dealer. This is why “seeking benefactors” made me feel like a beggar or a lowlife or worse. Now that I look back, though, my actual headline was the genesis of me coming to realize another important aspect of revision: collaboration. At every stage of my development as a writer, shit, my development as a human, there have been folks urging me ahead: writing teachers, grad school professors, editors, first readers who never refuse a request for comments on my drafts.

Now here’s the ask: Who are you going to collaborate with? I ask because what you’ve read thus far would be for damn near naught if you—yes, you—do nothing. Not asking you to save the world or stage some theatric intervention but to prosecute at least one meaningful action toward helping another human avoid a death sentence or a life sentence or a so-much-of-their-life-there’s-not-much-life-left sentence. Here’s the ask in other words: What physical act can you— yes, you—and me and we do to help the next Kevan or Lil Anthony or young Black see themselves in context, see their lives in progress, discover what’s right about themselves and imagine ways to make it more right?

Introduction

Caits Meissner with Elizabeth Hawes

Mythologist Joseph Campbell’s concept of the monomyth, more commonly known as “the Hero’s Journey,” is a story structure that follows a hero (or protagonist) as they embark on an adventure, face adversity, and pass through a portal of transformation, ultimately returning home ripened by knowledge and experience. In seventeen stages, delineated by three acts—departure, initiation, and return— Campbell overlays a clear structure on some of the oldest recorded religious and folktales in our collective cultural memory. These are typically stories that offer metaphorical guidance on our most conflictual and growthful human situations. You know it as well as I do: the struggle that produces fruit.

The shaping of our own lives as writers is the making of a mythology all its own—a mythology of the self. In the following chapter you will read many different versions of the writer’s Hero’s Journey. Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all for becoming a writer (trust me, I’ve been looking for the loophole for years). The aim of this chapter is to offer a sense of the myriad possibilities available both practically and philosophically—and the prison born-and-bred, jerry-rigged tips and tricks that have made the most distant of dreams come true. As I planned on who to invite into these pages, I kept returning to writer Elizabeth Hawes’s poignant missive:

Every time a prisoner submits their writing into the public sphere they are subjecting themselves to an audience who can easily look them up and be told a prosecutor’s version of a story (true or untrue) about their conviction. This is in juxtaposition to all a prisoner desires: To put the past behind them. To lay low and quietly merge back into society. To reconnect with those they love in fresh circumstances. Writing as a prisoner ties their name to the label of felon. A prisoner must ask themselves, am I willing to put myself out there? To possibly be talked about (again)? To be judged (again)? And, more importantly, is this story/play/poem/idea worth my vulnerability? Will people listen or judge? While all artists/writers question the value of their work and wonder who is viewing it and how it is being perceived, a prisoner who is an artist or who writes always carries the added burden of having to apologize for their past. Or for a piece of their past, or for one afternoon of their past or for one minute of their past.

The tests and challenges in the prison writer’s Hero’s Journey are dramatic in the sense that the walls are literal. Any writer’s path can be mystifying, even to themselves, a difficult-to-articulate series of both purposeful choices and chance encounters bolstered by raw talent and persistent dedication. In prison, the how-to of becoming a writer is not just mysterious; it can be completely opaque. This chapter calls on authors, all with the shared experience of justice involvement, to help make visible—and perhaps, sorry about this, burst some bubbles about—the journey of a writer. How do writers make a living off their work—or more accurately, do they at all? How do writers, through the many barriers erected by incarceration, connect with their audience? What opportunities are available, and how do writers know where to look for them? How do I protect my writing (practically), and how do I protect (philosophically) the people I care about who might appear, not always in such a flattering light, in my work? What ethical choices must I consider in my process? How much risk am I willing to assume?

Equally important, the writers in this section offer the great range of motivations for engaging the act of writing that extend beyond literary pursuit alone: healing, journaling, gaining practical skills that lead to improved communication with family and jobs, connection and friendship, more effective legal work, self-advocacy, personal growth. Regardless of angle, the essays in this chapter nearly all conclude with the final destination in Campbell’s Hero’s Journey: the freedom to live. Through writing as cathartic expression, writing as work, writing as lifestyle, writing as identity, writing as tool, writing as healer, connector, conduit, discipline, and practice and habit, writing frees. That must be the first purpose and motivation. And the rest? Well, I’ll leave you with this: take good notes.

The Price of Remaining Human

Thomas Bartlett Whitaker

I became a professional writer in 2007. During the subsequent years, I’ve managed to publish a couple of books, several hundred essays, and a smattering of short stories in numerous sources. I’ve won some awards, contests, a fellowship, a handful of grants and have had essays selected for various anthologies. I launched and currently edit a literary journal dedicated to incarcerated writers and artists that posts weekly content sourced from penal systems across the country. Somewhere in the midst of that tiresome little ego parade, I’d love to spin you a yarn about how my relative success was rooted in some previously unsuspected literary brilliance, how my tale is an immensely interesting (and highly marketable) Künstlerroman about how I pulled myself up by my cheap, offender-fabricated bootstraps and made myself a Hero of Art: Horatio Alger armed with a typewriter and a Mount Everest sentence to climb. That would be a downright nifty story. It would also be utter bosh.

The reality, as always, is both simpler and uglier. Here’s my secret and, I suspect, yours as well: I have borne witness to horror, to a world that threatens the very idea of human significance. It began with my trial. I grew up watching cop procedurals on television, where the detectives were scrupulously honest and the prosecutors principled. What I witnessed instead was a farce of justice, one that even a third-rate amateur dramatics society would have been embarrassed to put on stage. I was guilty—I admitted it, prostrated myself before that reality—and the state still cheated. It wasn’t subtle; it was a lesson in just how far the concept of justice had slipped into barbarism here in the South, that they didn’t even need to pretend to be honorable. I kept thinking, Wait a minute, what the devil just happened? That’s not how this is supposed to work! Abomination has its own gravity. You probably know that as well as I do.

On the chain bus to Texas’s death row, I met a fellow condemned prisoner named Shadow. Thrice weekly he was sent to a medical facility for dialysis, and his transport was the one tasked with picking me up from the classification unit. Shadow had an execution date just a few months down the line. When I asked him how he was dealing with the end of his story, he shrugged and said he was ready to go. I’ve never forgotten his eyes; I didn’t know exactly how a person could come to look so defeated, but I figured that the state was going to give me a master class on the subject. And they did: over the course of my eleven years on the row, they killed 161 men. I knew them all, and have not forgotten a single one of them.

The state plopped me down into the middle of a whirlwind, and I saw it begin to sandblast the men around me; I saw it begin to wear me down as well. Almost from my first few weeks, registering, discerning, and observing seemed to represent the only moral form of self-defense available to me, the only way to save the inner core of my decency before these portions were ripped away. And that’s really it, that’s all that has powered my career—such as it is—since. I’m not particularly talented, I’m not really special: I’m just highly motivated. I am, for want of a better word, haunted.

It’s certainly true that I’ve studied. It’s also true that I read a ton, and when I come across an essay or a novel that impacts me emotionally or intellectually, I work to deconstruct the text to try to get a view of its internal mechanics. But that’s all just method. If you don’t have a fire inside you raging to be released, you are never going to last in this game. You need to know this early on: becoming a prison writer, learning how to accurately speak truth to power and how to report from the depths of these little totalitarian fiefdoms embedded within the larger body politic, you are entering into a sort of reverse Faustian bargain. You may, if you stick with it long enough, find some regard in the eyes of posterity. In the meantime, the administration is going to seriously mess up your life. You will catch cases. You will attract the attention of the wardens. You may do time in seg for it, as I have. If you don’t have your motivations and expectations properly calibrated, you will flame out, exactly like most of the writers I’ve known over the years. If this isn’t a passion, if it’s not something you feel to be as necessary to survival as breathing, none of this will seem worth the trouble. And it won’t be.

You may think that this is a hustle that will pave the way to prison riches. It won’t. We’ve all met guys that claim to be banking off book royalties and movie options. A guy in the next section professes to have sold more than forty thousand copies of his urban novel. This is, to put it simply, a lie. You may, if you persevere, find a way to keep your head above the water fiscally, but you will never be adequately remunerated for your trouble. Best come to terms with that now.

Neither will you find fame—go ahead and put to the side visions of glorious reviews and mountains of letters from adoring (and wealthy, and gorgeous) fans. You will, if you stick with it long enough, attract a small group of people that may be willing to help you digitize your work for submission to journals or begin a website of your own. You don’t need this, but the truth is that every prisoner-author working today has had the largest portion of their success mediated through the assistance of others and the connections they can foster for you online. You can type each of your stories individually, but it sure helps to have someone on your team with email. I managed to start a web journal, Minutes Before Six, four months after my arrival on the row. How? Because I had a cousin who read my early essays and believed in me. Over the years, the site expanded to include hundreds of other writers, and it was able to do so only because of the assistance and tireless efforts of the site’s executive director and dozens of volunteers. You can walk this road alone, if you so choose, but it’s a bit easier if you learn to accept the kindness of the other.

At the end of the day, the equation for success is really very simple: your need to report upon the unnecessary cruelty of the prison world plus your yearning for genuine human contact is going to equal publication. Both variables are really aspects of the same thing: your continued possession of a beating human heart, one resolute in denying the recidivism-generating socialization forces arrayed against you. That is all that makes you different from the prisoners around you, all that protects you from them. This sounds like a sorry bargain, I know: doing a ton of work for a reward of poverty and obscurity and trouble; it’s going to occur to you at some point that while the unexamined life may not be worth living, pace Socrates, it certainly seems that the examined one can make you wish you were dead. Hey, welcome to the human condition, young writer. Now get to work, because we need you. If you won’t be the conscience of your world, there won’t be one. If you don’t tell the tale, no one will be left to do so.

The Most Important Thing (and a Few Other Rules)

Curtis Dawkins

The mistake I almost made began, as all the big ones do, with a thought: I’m not going to write something that has no chance of getting published.

I remember the moment exactly: walking the track at the prison in Muskegon, Michigan, writing a story in my head, one sparked by a cat food commercial. With the gravy and the chunks of meat, in slow motion—it looked downright appetizing. I imagined myself stranded on a desert island. Would I eat gourmet cat food?

How would Fancy Feast end up on the island? Well, see, the protagonist did something I wouldn’t. He signed up for a trip on a floating Greyhound—a cruise ship—which sank while the freight in its lowest hold, much of it pallets of Fancy Feast, washed ashore daily like manna from the sea. The ship’s only other survivor: a dancer from the vessel’s cabaret. The two used the shiny, peeled-back lids of their sustenance (I imagined the cat food “gritty, sand-like”) to spell a reflective “HELP” in the sand.

The guy through whose eyes we see the story, like many of my first-person narrators, was an insecure socially awkward idiot, who fell in love instantly with the washed-ashore dancer. He quickly decides that he doesn’t want them to be rescued. He has food and “love,” what more could he want?

Of course, they are rescued, and the last image is the guy in a helicopter, watching the sparkling, shrinking “HELP.”

Not writing the desert island story was one mistake I did not make. A better thought quickly appeared: I don’t care if no one publishes it. I’m gonna write it anyway. I had more fun with “Desert Island” than I’d ever had writing. I felt as free as I ever had.

***

Writing instructors like to say they follow no rules when it comes to writing, as if they were a rebellious James Dean in a cold, cold world. Here is a rule: publication doesn’t make you a writer, writing does. And some writers are perfectly happy going about it with no desire for publication.

After “Desert Island,” I wrote several more “short-shorts,” and not long after, reading an issue of Poets & Writers, I spotted a tiny advertisement for a literary journal in Ann Arbor that I had never heard of, called Hobart. I sent them three short-shorts, and a few months later, my SASE returned with a letter from Aaron Burch, the publisher: he would love to publish what I had sent.

***

This next rule I have instinctively followed all my life: every writer is first and foremost an avid reader of thought-provoking books. This can be fiction or nonfiction. I know a novelist, Kimberly Knutsen, who writes only fiction but reads only nonfiction!

Some months after those brief stories appeared in Hobart, Jarrett Haley, the publisher of Bull, another small literary journal, wrote to say he had read them and loved the “voice” of them and that he wanted to include a book review in Bull’s online version, but with his growing family, he simply didn’t have time. His idea was that a person who had nothing but time could write them. Over the next few years I wrote one hundred “Prison Book Reviews” and loved every second of it! I did it for free but was paid in experience (and books, which I donated to the prison library), things much more valuable than money.

During this time, I also wrote longer stories, some of which appeared in Bull and other journals. I learned how to write every day (except Sunday) no matter what. I do not set a time or word limit; I simply show up daily at about the same time. If I sit at my typewriter, or notebook, for an hour and write nothing, that’s still considered writing. I make my daily practice very low-pressure. Sometimes I take a week off—hard to do, but always worth it.

***

Here’s one more rule: there is no such thing as writer’s block. That is only “fear of writing badly” masquerading as something that sounds official. Every writer writes badly every day—it’s the only way to get to the center of things.

In 2013, Jarrett moved from Indiana to San Diego, becoming editor of Triton, the alumni magazine of San Diego State University. This job brought him eventually to interview an alum named Sandra Dijk-stra, the well-known literary agent instrumental in bringing to publication one of the most important books of the 1980s: The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan.

My manuscript of fourteen stories, The Graybar Hotel, was given to Sandra, by Jarrett, in May 2015, and it was sold two days later to Scribner—an old, esteemed publisher now owned by Simon & Schuster. The book was released in a dozen foreign languages, in hardcover, on July 4, 2017. A lot happened, good and bad, before and after July 4, but the most important part—deciding to write that story—you now know.

***

Here is one final rule: the more one learns about writing, the more difficult writing seemingly becomes, and now you probably already know too much—it is the danger of reading. Don’t lose the edge and energy that comes with being a novice. Continue to invent.

I have written five and a half unpublished novels over the past twenty-five years, have been serving a life without parole sentence for sixteen of those, and at the age of fifty-two, I think the book I’m currently writing might be my best. Everything I have learned seems finally to be working in concert. Then again, I have thought that before.

I work on it daily. And that is the most important thing.

On Publishing from Prison

Saint James Harris Wood

How I Published from Prison

Well, the judge gave you some time to write. Prison is a weird, fucked-up gift for a writer. If the average convict can take the time and energy used in their careers of crime, drugs, and pursuing sex and instead pour it into writing every day, that convict will become a legitimate author. Writers are desperate for time to write, and the state has generously supplied it for you: time away from relationships (which distract from writing); time with no rent or bills or day job (where they discourage writing); and while locked up you will hopefully have time away from crime and malfeasance in general, which on the streets is a huge writing distraction what with all the high-speed chases and getting shot.

Selling stories is a completely different skill set and test of your sanity. I’ve seen numerous convict writers spend a year or more honing their craft, carrying around a thesaurus, and having long conversations about movie and international rights for their books and stories. Then they get two or three rejection letters, fall to pieces, and fire off lengthy threats rejecting the rejections and the editor’s authority; then, the warden gets wind of the threatening letters to the editor. . . . It never ends well.

John Steinbeck collected over a thousand rejection slips before his first sale, and people often advised him to quit. Steinbeck never gave up and ended up doing well thanks to his dogged and possibly lunatic campaign of literary submissions. He simply wrote his ass off and then applied that same work ethic to submitting his stories to literally every publisher in America.

There are books with thousands of addresses and good advice for the emerging writer. Writer’s Market, which comes out every year in paperback, is excellent; I got year-old copies for five dollars and wouldn’t have sold anything without them. Your library might have one.

Learning how to present yourself to the outside world is not as fun as writing, but if you want to sell your writings, a lot of work needs to be done. While the Writer’s Market provides addresses for a thousand possible outlets for your work, it is bad to copy their template for a cover letter (a letter explaining who you are that accompanies every submission). Your letter will be ignored if it reads exactly like thousands of other cover letters. See more on this below.

Always ask for a copy of the magazine; they often have a policy of free mags for convicts. Ask for advice, ask for addresses of other magazines, ask for help. If you send out a thousand submissions with a good cover letter, a dozen or so people will hook you up one way or another, and success breeds success. A rejection letter with any kind of a personal comment is a future sale and a relationship you should nurture. Do not overwhelm an editor with too many letters or submissions. Once a month is the most you should submit to any magazine, and many have more stringent rules.

I wrote four to five hours a day, five days a week, and spent every weekend, six to eight hours a day, listening to music, stuffing and sending envelopes full of stories and poems to every single English magazine in the world, literally. I wrote on a typewriter in my cell until midnight, I wrote on the computer at my job in the library, I wrote longhand in a composition book during mandatory NA meetings, I wrote in one of the classrooms where a teacher was happy to help a productive convict; I may have been writing in my sleep. After the first year of my relentless submission campaign, I began to get mail daily, at least one rejection letter a night and often two or three. Bob Dylan says, “There’s no success like failure.” You learn and grow from a failure and carry on.

It took three years to sell my first story and five years more before people contacted me about publishing my work. This happened because the literary magazines I got published in (like the Iowa Review and the Sun) are the minor leagues where one gets known and professional and paid—the majority of magazines will also publish and not pay, which is a good way to build up your résumé. After being published by the Sun, Adbusters, and Esquire, I began to get mail from people who seemed fascinated by prison and sympathetic to our plight. I found it easier to sell 3,000- to 5,000-word pieces, rather than one of the four novels and several memoirs I’d been working on.

When do you sell a piece, be prepared to have your work edited, perhaps eviscerated. Some editors won’t touch your story, while others will take it apart to an alarming degree, and you have to be humble and open to suggestions. Creating and working with editors forged relationships for me that have lasted years and got my stories published repeatedly in several magazines.

The arty mystique and lofty ideas behind being a writer are all you have when the world seems oblivious to your offerings and suffering. I indulged in vainglorious notions such as a redemption scenario wherein I wrote my way into renown and gained back my kids’ respect. My huge extended family were all involved in this complicated success fantasy. My novels sold and I lavished riches on my sons and mom. Trite and sentimental—I’d hate it in a book. But this fantasy motivated me to write on many days.

After finishing a few stories, I had a body of work, which gave me a certain authority that allowed me to deem myself a writer. There is a large element of chance and blind luck in the success of any artistic endeavor. But I wouldn’t have been available for the luck that sold my novels the first day out of prison if I hadn’t worked on my writing career every day, usually late into the night, like a madman.

Cover Letters, in Theory and Fact

The cover letter is often a slapdash affair copied out of a book or carelessly written just like a thousand others. A submission needs a well thought-out cover letter; it’s a way to catch editors by surprise before they even read your work. Editors are busy but predisposed toward writing that is original and will notice you because of an unusual but well-crafted letter.

“PRISON” is likely stamped on your envelope, so run with it. People wonder about prison, so it behooves you to explain your surroundings and how you came to write in such a place. All the better if you can make it humorous, not that hard when you think of all the knuckleheads (inmates and staff) surrounding you.

Well-read people also like humility, self-deprecation, and a hint of redemption in their convicts. Braggarts and those who glory in their past criminal activities alarm most reputable and even disreputable publishers. In your cover letter you can write about books and authors you like. Talk about your Dickensian slave labor job and how you make fifteen cents an hour. Riots are always interesting. Write about anything that might be odd or noteworthy involving your incarceration, especially in regard to your literary pursuits. Make yourself an interesting and good character who is trying to write and sell stories under the most compelling of circumstances.

My first cover letters were conceptual in that I kept them brief, almost abrupt, thinking that it might endear me to overwhelmed editors. I still subscribe to this notion on principle: get in, state the facts, and get out before you say something stupid. However, I inadvertently discovered something I called “the Rabble Letter.” This was a letter I often quickly wrote, one a month, then made hundreds of copies for magazines, girlfriends, family, fans, the governor, and various literary agents. This rabble letter was often a long, wandering stream of anecdotes about prison’s absurdities expressed almost as a river of consciousness, confusing and insane, sometimes two full pages long. My artist friends and I illustrated them, sometimes I stuck in pieces of weird institutional forms, used New Yorker cartoons, took pictures out of magazines, and the end product was arresting.

These letters look and read like a desperate missive from a nearly unhinged writer overcoming all types of odd tribulations using moxie, poetry, insults, and stories. Having access to a computer made the process even better as I could personalize a long letter in just a couple minutes. And it fucking worked. Too well, some might say. Esquire magazine, the Sun, the Iowa Review (and a whole slate of foreign literary magazines) began to buy the damn letters, rather than the submissions. The Iowa Review gave me a thousand-dollar award for most unusual story of the year (it wasn’t a story; it was five rabble letters and my write-up for weed). The only other award I ever won (from PEN America) was for a short story about swallows, which I took out of a rabble letter. So, think about that.

Copyright Protection in Brief

Lateef Mtima, JD, and John R. Whitman, PhD

Put your pen to paper and write something original and you own it. It belongs to you. You should protect it, especially if it might be worth something. If anyone is going to make money from your writing, it should start with you and understanding how copyright law is designed to protect your original work. Here are some copyright basics that you should know.

What is copyright and how do you get it? Everything you write that is original to you and is fixed for the first time in a recorded form, such as on paper, is automatically protected by copyright for your life plus seventy years. So you have a copyright automatically by creating your own original (not copies from someone or something else) literary work and “fixing it” by putting it on paper, painting it on canvas, or recording or filming it on tape. A copyright gives you specific legal or “exclusive” rights—only the copyright holder has the right to make copies of the work, to distribute or sell it, to make derivative works based on the original, or to perform or display the work for the public.

How is copyright protection enforced? Copyright protection is not automatically enforceable and is certainly not bulletproof. Once your work is on paper or sung or seen, anyone might copy it, and no one can prevent that. Someone using your work without permission might claim that they did not know it was protected by copyright. To deny them this poor excuse, you could post your copyright notice on your work, as follows: “Copyright 2021, by Your Name. All Rights Reserved.” Also, it is not unusual for new writers to offer their work for publication at no cost, just to start building a reputation. In this case, be sure to indicate that you are providing permission for onetime use and that you are retaining full copyright ownership of your work.

For those who wish to share their work freely, consider one of the Creative Commons licenses, which let you indicate how your work should be attributed and how it can be used. But this is not an alternative to registering your copyright for legal protection. While the law protects your interests, it does not prevent others from breaking the law. Enforcement is up to you as the copyright owner—when someone copies or sells your work without your permission you have to take them to court for copyright infringement. But in order to sue in court for copyright infringement, you must first register your work with the US Copyright Office.

How do you file a copyright registration? Some people think that sending a copy of your manuscript to yourself through the mail and not opening the envelope, sometimes called the “poor man’s copyright,” is the way to get or register copyright, but this is completely false. The current system on the Copyright Office website lets you file electronically by submitting a digital copy of your work (text plus images, if any, such as for a greeting card, a verifiable under-the-table prison industry) with a fee. Fees can change; the latest fees for online registrations as of September 2021 are $85 for a standard collection (multiple works submitted for a single registration), or $45 for a single work by a single author. Paper applications require a fee of $125 paid in advance by check or money order. To receive paper forms with instructions, write or call the Copyright Office and provide a mailing address. A response may take six to eight weeks. Note that all filings will require a reliable mailing address for yourself because you will be receiving a copyright certificate as a legal document. In case the Copyright Office has questions, you must also provide the name and telephone number of someone you designate as your authorized agent to speak on your behalf.

The mailing address is US Copyright Office, 101 Independence Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20559–6000; the telephone number is 202–707-3000; and the toll-free number is 877-476-0778. If you don’t have access to the internet, and it is difficult to file by mail, you can ask a trusted person to file for you in your name. We strongly advise that, no matter who files, you first consult the detailed filing instructions at https://www.copyright.gov.

As mentioned above, you can submit a collection of works, such as poems or greeting cards, under a single application, and all will be covered by the same copyright registration. This can save considerable money.

Are there exceptions that allow free use of protected works? Yes. In order to provide protection for creators and still to promote freedom of expression, US copyright law has a category called “fair use” that allows exceptions for the free use of copyrighted work in some cases— for example, in criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. The law provides four factors to determine whether an exception for fair use is allowed:

1.Is it for commercial or nonprofit, educational use?

2.Is the work more creative in nature or more factual in nature?

3.How much of the protected material will be used, and is it central or more peripheral to the importance of the work?

4.What would be the impact on the potential market value of the protected work?

So, for example, quoting a small amount of text from a protected work in an academic paper or educational book, with attribution, would qualify as fair use. Any commercial use should first request permission.

How can you make money from your work? Using computer technology and the internet, it is now easier than ever to publish and sell your own work. But for many authors, the best and easiest way to profit from their works is simply to grant a license to use or assign their copyright to a reputable publisher who sells the work and pays a royalty to the author. In such a case, the author does not need to register the copyright; this is done by the publisher after the author assigns copyright ownership to the publisher. Nevertheless, it can come as quite a surprise to learn that publishers often pay a relatively small amount for royalties, often just 7 to 10 percent of the list price of the work, such as a book, so you might get just seventy cents on a book you wrote that sells for ten dollars.

Be wary of typically unknown and start-up publishers or “agents” who ask you to assign your copyright to them without compensation or a written agreement. Once you turn over your copyright, you don’t have much recourse if they fail to give you anything in return.

How can you seek additional help? The US Copyright Office is a bountiful source of information and educational materials on copyright. The office is also prepared to helpfully respond to questions. It does not take a lawyer to understand how you can register your own copyright. Nevertheless, it does take attention to detail to follow the instructions for registering copyrights for each of the different types of works protected by law. If you are part of a group of writers, it might make sense to assign this project to one volunteer, who can then explain the process to the others.

What’s the bottom line? Sadly, there is a long history of how more powerful interests have appropriated and profited from the creative works of artists and inventors.²⁵ For about two hundred years, enslaved people in America were not entitled to own any property, even of their own creation. Their masters owned them and their creations. The music industry is rife with examples of artists and recording studios profiting from works created by songwriters and composers who never received credit or compensation. Misappropriation particularly plagued the Black community of creators, but even John Lennon and Paul McCartney were clueless about ownership rights to songs when they started out and signed contracts with no understanding of copyrights.²⁶

In short, copyright law in the United States is meant to encourage you to write original material and to profit from it if you wish. So by all means, start writing today and then either contract with a reputable publisher to sell your work in exchange for a royalty or other compensation, or register your own copyright if you think it will be financially rewarding to sell it yourself. In either case, we wish you the best of luck joining the cavalcade of famous and aspiring writers over the centuries who experienced incarceration. Finally, please note that this is not a legal document. If you need legal advice or opinion, please consult with an attorney.

25Lateef Mtima, ed., Intellectual Property, Entrepreneurship, and Social Justice: From Swords to Ploughshares (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2015).

26Jeff Carter, “Strictly Business: A Historical Narrative and Commentary on Rock and Roll Business Practices,” Tennessee Law Review 78, no. 213 (2010), 213–57.

Burn the Spot

On Writing about People You Know

Piper Kerman

While I was doing time, the Federal Bureau of Prisons changed their smoking policy and the prison where I was locked up banned cigarettes. Of course, commissary first sold off all the remaining cartons of coffin nails, and the looming ban triggered a frenzied rush to stockpile. Incarcerated tobacco enthusiasts had one month to smoke their brains out, and then cigarettes became contraband.

This had a big impact on the culture of the unit where I lived, a minimum-security prison camp where women had a lot of access to the outdoors. Some of the women I was close with were addicted to nicotine, and many more would smoke out of boredom or to relieve the abundant stress found behind prison walls. The hunt for spots to hide cigarettes and—more challenging—spots to actually smoke them was matched by the hunt of COs on the prowl for violators.

This cat-and-mouse game, one with serious consequences, affected all of us whether we were holding contraband or not. I remember rounding the corner of an outbuilding to find a huddle of nervous women sucking down smoke. “Don’t burn the spot, Piper!” was their entreaty, and while I was incarcerated I would never, ever have done so, for reasons both practical and principled.

The need to keep secrets, hold confidences, and protect the spot is extremely powerful in prison, a place of constant threat and surveillance from many quarters. The need to tell the truth in the face of these pressures creates a unique conflict for incarcerated and also formerly incarcerated writers. Truth can hurt, and prisons are already bottomless wells of pain and trauma. I think writing from prison or about prison creates a moral demand to counter that maw of suffering, even as you are bearing witness to it.

When I write about prison, and when I teach writing to incarcerated men and women, these quandaries are often top of mind and discussed with intensity. The judgment of the writer carries great value for their reader, but judging others can be a queasy business for criminalized people. Some of the best writing my incarcerated students have done puts people they know out on front street: a parent whose choices were, mildly put, flawed; a powerful but disturbing characterization of a cellie or a prison neighbor; a codefendant who fucked up big-time.

A good story has people vividly rendered, their powers and weaknesses revealed, the attractions and repulsions of their presence strong enough to be felt by the reader. Paper-doll heroes, villains, and sidekicks are boring. So is work that is abstract and oblique to the point of meaninglessness. When I wrote Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison, I tried to write about the people I encountered while incarcerated as freely, honestly, and specifically as I possibly could in the first draft. Revision allowed me to revisit my pages with conscience and discretion. I wrote about women whom I loved with abandon, men I detested from my gut, and some people who evoked more conflicted feelings.

Any writer of personal stories will surely think about, and perhaps worry over, how the real people who populate those stories—whether they are termed “fiction” or “true”—will feel about their portrayal. One of the values of revision is the opportunity for the writer to reflect on where that portrayal came from, within them. Being honest will put your own racism, misogyny, homophobia, and other ignorances front and center, so take the opportunity revision offers to wrestle with and question your own received truths.

For incarcerated or formerly incarcerated writers, these dilemmas take on heightened and complex calculations. One of the most compelling ingredients of writing is conflict, and incarcerated people are pretty much guaranteed to have that in spades. Whatever the facts of their case, innocent or guilty, they are in conflict with the state, and that conflict will be personified: in their jailers and overseers, their bunkies or cellies, the other prisoners in their unit, their loved ones whom they are separated from, perhaps now-distant victims whom they have harmed.

There are two practical concerns that arise while writing truthfully: protecting yourself, if incarcerated, and protecting other people. On day 1 of a writing class in a men’s state prison, I was asked, “Are the cops going to read our writing?” Fear of confiscation may require you to write a version of prison life that changes certain facts, such as names and other identifiers. Fear of exposing others to harm, or re-traumatizing people, will also guide your hand.

Incarcerated people also carry with them the conflicts they survived before being locked up. There is a likelihood of heightened, dramatic conflict in a person’s life on the outs. People who are in prison or jail are often among the most marginalized people in society, and existing on the margins is a struggle that includes scarcity and pain. When I teach in prison, we work on stories with many kinds of conflict: person versus person, person versus nature, person versus society, person versus fate, person versus self. These springboards get you into the pool where your lived experience with other people swims alongside your creative aspirations. Your creativity will make truthfulness possible, even as you take seriously a responsibility not to harm others. The best advice I can give is to write about people with love, even when their actions are wrong. This is easier said than done, but it will result in your best work.

When it comes to characterization, the prison writer must face the antagonist. This is true in self-characterization, and we contend with it in our portrayal of others. I have students who have written tenderly about a parent in response to one writing prompt, only to share a terrifying story of abuse and neglect a few weeks later. Same parent, both stories are true. Even the most flawed people are multidimensional, and those who have impacted our lives deserve full consideration in our writing. Blind spots around race, class, gender, and sexuality exist for all of us, and when we dehumanize others in our storytelling, we only diminish our own humanity in the mind of our readers.

Every writer has to fantasize success—whatever that means to them—or we would never finish anything. I realized shortly after the publication of my book that the story no longer belonged to me, other than in the literal sense of copyright. When the ink was dry and I gave the story over to the reader, it now belonged to them. And readers loved the other women in Orange Is the New Black, so much that the story took on entirely unique and expanded meaning in adaptation. I heard from many of the women portrayed in the book, and only one objected to her characterization (and we are still friends). A close pal told me, “I loved this book so much I didn’t want it to end,” which was hilarious given how much we wanted to get out of prison. Another woman, whom I bumped into on the street, offered a compliment with a cooler temperature. She didn’t say she liked the book; she simply said, “I’m glad you wrote it.”

What’s the intention of your writing? If you periodically return to this question it will help you make humane choices about your portrayals of other people. For what you keep private, there is full license and in fact necessity to put down the unvarnished truth. When you are writing for publication, remember what your primary goal is: Is it to entertain, to bear witness, to educate, to persuade toward action? What you want to accomplish will determine how you populate the world you create, no matter what form your writing takes.

I set out to write about my experience in prison with an optimistic hope that if readers imagined themselves in the shoes of the women I portrayed, then maybe they might think and feel differently about mass incarceration. I certainly conceived my memoir as a fuck-you to the Bureau of Prisons, the people who run it, and the feds more broadly. My task was to draw a reader who thought of themselves as an upstanding, law-abiding citizen into that repudiation of a system they may have seen as their protection.

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 thirty 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.

The Power of Grieving in Words

Vivian D. Nixon

The prison van with chicken-wired windows drives us to town to catch the Greyhound bus. I have forty dollars and a bus ticket in my pocket. When I leave to transfer, I cannot walk fast because my pants might fall. Thanks to the barely identifiable nutritional staples of mess hall cuisine, I lost more weight than when Ma put me on prescription diet pills at fourteen. These clothes were picked three years ago. Before I surrendered to the district attorney, I packed everything and labeled each box with “Send this when I make parole.”

I did my time the hard way. My mother, the erudite president of the church missionary society, was not going to normalize the prison experience by sending monthly care packages. I got packages on Thanks-giving, Christmas, and Easter. My birthday? No. January 6 is too close to Christmas. Prison rules already restrict the content of packages. Ma took it a step further. Shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, and after three months of begging, a typewriter. The first month, I asked her to send snacks, instant coffee, and creamer. She replied, “Don’t they feed you?”

My mind is full of the past and present. Toward the back of the bus, away from other people, I am grateful for some solitude. I wish I had something to read or listen to. I’ve left behind all my books, my radio, and my trusty hotpot for the women who have no one to send them things. Rocky has the typewriter to help people write legal letters. Who will help Nicky with her GED practice test tomorrow? It’s 2001 and New York State is still sending kids as young as sixteen to adult prisons. These kids should be in school.

In the life of my dreams, I would have been a famous writer. But when I was in eighth grade a teacher accused me of plagiarism. Though she had no proof, she gave me a C. In her mind, it was not possible for a kid from the projects to write well. Freshman year at Oswego, I got the female lead in the annual stage play. When Ma noticed I was a theater arts major: “Theater? Are you out of your cotton-pickin’ mind? You are no Farrah Fawcett. Change your major or pay your own damn tuition!”

This is how my life turned out. Yesterday the class threw me a book-themed party. “Surprise!” Make-believe book signs were hung around the room with titles written in black crayon: “Goodbye Mama V, Never Come Back,” “To Mama V with Love.” The lower-right-hand corner of each make-believe book gave me credit: “By Mama V.” To avoid sentiment, I stuck to the routine. “Aww, thank you. This is so sweet. But we have work to do. The practice test is coming up.”

We always started with a story. I sat in my place in the circle, closest to the door. When the nine students, aged sixteen to fifty-eight, took their seats, I recalled how I became known as the Grievance Queen of Albion.

“When I first got here, they gave me a top bunk. I complained. I have this bad back that makes it unsafe to climb up and down. But you all know Officer Fisher is never happy unless someone else is miserable. She sent me to the medical unit, and the nurse said it would take two to three weeks to get the hospital to do a test to prove I have arthritis. The next day I went to the law library. I thought I could get the medical test sooner. Turns out, New York State correctional law says, ‘persons taller than 5’10” inches, and persons who weigh more than—mind your business—pounds shall not be double bunked.’ Two days later, I was not only off the top bunk, I had a single cubicle. Being the fat girl finally paid off.

“That was the day I chose this class as my work assignment. You all like writing up complaints. Our formula helps. Remember: Introduce, Data, Expound, Argue, Summarize (IDEAS). OK. Who’s got a complaint for us to write today?”

It’s a miracle anybody ever got a GED in Albion back then. But when we practiced turning complaints into official grievances and won a couple of cases, motivation to study for the language part of the test increased. To ease the process, I came up with the IDEAS method for grievances, and it works for personal essays, too:

Introduction: What is the topic? What is your central idea? Why should the reader care?

Solitude. As far back as I remember, I went to the Mill Pond on Sundays, where it’s quiet, except for the bells from St. Peter’s church in the distance. I miss those Sundays. I miss a lot about being free. At that pond, I learned to value spending time with myself. Everyone should have quiet space in their life that is theirs, and theirs alone.

Data: Do research. State the facts. Writing doesn’t need to be complicated; it needs to be clear.

Solitude can be a mental health or religious practice or a secular personal habit. There are known benefits. Meditation, prayer, mindfulness, it all boils down to quality time with yourself.

Add facts that support the central idea. Anecdotes count as data in a personal essay:

My mother used to take me to Mill Pond when I was little. We’d pack stale bread for the ducks and walk down Harbor Road together. I was sixteen when Ma seemed to prefer to do things without me. She thought I should spend more time with kids my own age. She didn’t know about the bullies. At the pond, feeding the ducks, I felt safe.

Let’s add some data about solitude in prison:

Sundays in prison are boring. You can go to chapel, or the yard. If you’re lucky your family comes. I’m never that lucky. Chapel is only one hour, then Sundays are my Mill Pond days. I stay in my cubicle and I think, I listen to music, or write a poem. It helps me feel less sad that I don’t have a visitor myself.

Expound: Further develop your thesis. Connect it to the data.

At home, I would take my Sony Walkman to the pond and listen to music for hours. I wouldn’t realize how many hours had passed until my stomach let me know it was lunchtime. Clearing the mind makes room to creatively handle life’s demands. Opportunities for solitude should be available, even here in prison. If the prison got rid of solitary confinement as punishment, those rooms could be meditation rooms. People could sign up to use them for an hour at a time once a week. The din of prison would fade away. What if meditation rooms could reduce stress-related problems in prisons?

Argue: What is the other perspective? Why is your perspective better?

Correctional officers believe prisons need solitary confinement to keep things under control. They use the box to punish people, mostly for fights. Instead, people might use the meditation rooms to walk away from a fight. There are other ways to hold people accountable besides solitary confinement. If contraband is the cause, for example, confiscate it. Take away commissary privileges. Search their cell twice a week.

Summarize: Tell the reader what you want them to do and conclude.

The world is full of noise and confusion, and it’s no different in prisons. We live in an open dormitory with no privacy, no control over when people interrupt us. Research shows that people benefit from controlling their own time and space. I wish there were no prisons, but while we have them, can we figure out how to make them less damaging to people’s physical and emotional health?

When the party ended, I took the make-believe book covers off the wall. On this bus, I am comforted knowing they are packed in a box with my prison letters and poems, all the starts and stops of prose that struggle to explain the impact of the tiny slights that follow a life. I read the highway signs backwards, seliM 01 potS tseR txeN, a strange habit I’ve had since I was a kid. It means we are thirty miles outside New York City. As the bus approaches the off-ramp to the Lincoln Tunnel, a tsunami of shame pushes forward, threatening to wash away the promise of hope. I don’t know what’s in front of me. I asked nine women who know the pain of shattered confidence to believe in themselves. All they asked of me was the same. I promised them I would work on my memoir. I reach into the duffel bag, grab my notebook and pen, and begin.

And Still I Write

Creative Expression for Self-Advocacy

Alejo Rodriguez

“Every poem is a love poem.”

These were the words of a guest poet who came to our workshop in Nap—that is, the Eastern Correctional Facility in New York. My gut reaction was like, “Love poems?” Man, I was there to spit fire. Call it poetry if you want to, but I was there to use my writing to sort through some real shit. My anger. My distrust of anything institutional. My questioning of myself: Were my values really my values or just some things I adopted from other people? Why was it that I couldn’t shake the voice in my head talking about how we’d been in prison before even though this was my first time? And here goes this poetry cat talking about every poem is about love. Yeah, a’ight.

The following week, when I came back to class, I noticed a couple of brothers who’d regularly attended the group weren’t there. I wasn’t surprised. There had been some chatter about how they weren’t feeling it anymore, that the poetry was getting corny. Real talk, some of it was. But still I showed up. Writing was the only place where I could have that reflective self-talk without having to worry about someone droppin’ a slip on me to see the psych.

And so I wrote, and I read—anything I could find that critically analyzed systemic oppression—and I began to question traditional applications of commonly used terms. Words like freedom. Public school had taught me that after the Civil War people of African descent were set free. But when I look around me at the conditions imposed on Black and brown people—schools, housing, health care—these conditions may not be literal prison or slavery, but they sure as hell don’t look like freedom. More like an unfreedom, if you ask me. In turn, I was determined to own the full power of the words I chose, even if it meant making one up my own just to put it in a poem. When they read it, anyone who’d ever been denied freedom would know exactly what I meant.

Around that time, I had thirteen years in on an eighteen-years-to-life sentence and was diligently focused on parole. When I finally went to the board, I felt prepared, but I got denied. Hit in the head with an additional twenty-four months before I would be considered for parole again, I told myself that I’d get it right next time. The next time came, and so did the next hit. All in all, I made eleven parole appearances and served fourteen years over my minimum. As I was serving time on robbery/felony murder charges, I understood the initial concerns due to the nature of the crime. But after eight, nine, ten denials! What da fuck!?

For those who’ve never had to appear in front of a parole board, imagine being called for a job interview without being told the job you’re applying for, no job description, no indication of the skills or qualifications they’re looking for. Just go in there and sell yourself. The process is so arbitrary that most people who make parole can’t even say for sure what swayed the interview in their favor. It was fumbling around in the darkness. But did it have to be that way? It was this questioning that pushed me to rethink the lessons I learned from writing. Wading in legal battles, I had drifted away from what poetry had taught me: to own the words I choose.

For decades until that point, I had been searching to express myself in terms that I thought the parole board would want to hear, without command of how I actually expressed myself. I began to reexamine key words that the board would use in their denial explanations—like lack of remorse or lack of insight. Throughout my bid, I had certainly wrestled with these words. They had a living, breathing presence, and so I was disappointed to learn that both words were nouns—a person, place, or static thing contained within a limited existence. In my heart, though, I understood these words to be verbs—in motion, actionable, evolving. I knew that remorse, for example, is far more than saying the words “I’m sorry.” Remorse showed up in who I surrounded myself with, the seemingly small choices I made, and the big goals I set. I also understood insight as illumination that expands over time. The connecting of dots between the root concepts of life lessons, and making conscious how they influence our daily decisions. Insight was understanding why I chose to involve myself in volunteer programs outside of what was mandated, or why I spoke up not just for myself but also for others locked up.

I began to write with a sharpened purpose. I took my ass to the law library. No longer would I put my life in the hands of some court-appointed attorneys, who saw me as no more than another number on their caseload, another generic cut-and-paste parole appeal brief to be submitted to the court in order to get paid. In some ways, it helped to push against an edge. If it wasn’t for my negative experiences, I might have never been so determined to cultivate my own self-advocacy. Even when I encountered a positive attorney experience, which I did, I wouldn’t just acquiesce to their defense strategies. Rather, I looked at it as a chance to build together. As far as I was concerned, I was the one best suited to talk about my experiences. Lo and behold, once I began writing my own appeals, and doing so in my own voice, I started to win some—and for others as well. Although my victories weren’t enough to get me out of prison, they were encouraging. Outside of the courtroom, I also wrote articles aimed at the larger public. I didn’t yet think of myself as an advocate in those terms, it just felt right to put my own work in, as opposed to sitting in a cell complaining about “the system” and expecting someone else to bail me out.

I eventually made parole, and I’ll be honest, I can’t say for sure that my advocacy is what got me out. But one thing is certain: I had cultivated my voice. It made a difference. After thirty-two years in prison, I could finally get involved in the movement to end mass incarceration. From reentry organizations to college programs, advocacy to faith-based organizations, I got in where I could fit in. The majority of the advocates I’ve collaborated with in the past three years have never been in prison, but they are committed to changing the systems that oppress us. Those most successful are clear that their efforts will not succeed without partnering with those directly impacted. Our leadership grounds advocacy in real-life experience.

Today, I’m chief of curriculum and storytelling at Zealous, an organization cultivating the individual and collaborative advocacy, voice, and potential of people impacted by the system, in partnership with public defenders, organizers, law schools, and artists. Our goal is to get leaders to finally end the laws, policies, and practices that lead to “unfreedom.” In Prince George’s County, Maryland, for example, within the first few months of the coronavirus pandemic, we worked with local public defenders, civil rights lawyers, a local organization led by formerly incarcerated women, and Broadway actors to amplify the voices of people jailed pretrial in the Covid-filled county jail. Over sixty courageous people inside had already spoken their truth and shared it with their lawyers, who submitted sworn declarations about their conditions of confinement to the court. Despite this, the federal judge overseeing the civil rights lawsuit ignored them. The normal legal process wasn’t working. But when we partnered with Broadway Advocacy Coalition to have dozens of actors, singers, academics, and activists read their words, the result was remarkable. Their voices were amplified beyond the audience of one judge to millions. Thousands signed petitions calling for their release. Tens of thousands of dollars were raised to bail people out. Law students from Howard University began observing court and holding judges and prosecutors accountable. And the county let up and came to the table to negotiate a settlement of the lawsuit.

This is just one project. These collaborations and nontraditional advocacy methods can help shift the narrative in the general public about the humanity of those incarcerated, influence leaders to take action to change unfair and racist laws and practices, and even boomerang back to the outcomes of your legal cases. A little over three years ago I never would have imagined this career in an emerging field called impact storytelling would even exist. And yet, from the vista of where hard work looks like magic, I could see how my approach to writing and poetry, my drive to question—and sometimes reject— traditional thought not only readied me for this position but actually inspired this organization to create the position for me.

Helpful Tools and Practices to Cultivate the Power of Your Voice

•Try writing and keep a journal, but don’t judge yourself. Practice spitting your fire. No one needs to see it, but the practice of writing, getting words down, even about the seemingly mundane can be cathartic on a personal level and help to hone a craft you might otherwise never discover.

•Cultivating your voice doesn’t require you to write. Although writing was and continues to be the way I best express myself, consider other means of expression, from visual art to songwriting, from performance to connecting with like-minded people and forming a discussion group.

•Seek out opportunities for creative expression: attend a creative writing workshop. If by chance your facility does not provide one, propose the idea to in-house organizations to get one started. See the section “On Building Writing Community” in this book for resources on how to do this. Attend a public-speaking workshop. Likewise, if your facility does not provide one, propose the idea to in-house organizations to get one started. “On Building Writing Community” will offer some beginning ideas.

•If ready to deepen your work and learn new skills, reach out to the PEN Prison Writing Program or other mentor opportunities listed in the resources section of this book.

•Read, and then read some more, social justice literature, such as Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Angela Davis’s Are Prisons Obsolete?, and Ernest Drucker’s A Plague of Prisons: The Epidemiology of Mass Incarceration in America. Whichever text you choose, read and write reflections in response to individual chapters to process your learnings and keep your mind sharp.

•Challenge the accepted meaning of words, while recognizing the power of communities historically who’ve made up their own slang and dialects and flipped grammatical norms. You can do this too. Words are the ingredients of expression. Experiment.

•Be wary of writing or speaking like you think you’re supposed to or expected to write and think. Find your voice and live and breathe it. The most important part of impact storytelling is engaging a listener or audience—whether a friend, an ally, a decision maker, or an institution like a parole board—not the issue or injustice itself.

•Seek out collaborators. This could mean just other folks who like to write or create. This could also mean people you’re in touch with on the outside with access to tools and resources unavailable to you on the inside.

•Consider your attorneys, public defenders or otherwise, as potential collaborators for advocacy outside of the normal legal process. Whether you have a good relationship with your attorney or not, whether you think they have your interests at heart or not, advocate for yourself and consider pressing them to explore creative, nontraditional opportunities to share your voice for impact in your case or for broader systemic impact—whether it’s connecting you with traditional media and press; connecting you with artists, filmmakers, activists, and organizers; or connecting you with local and national advocacy organizations that are helping to amplify stories for strategic impact, legal and otherwise.

These are just suggestions that have worked for me or I have witnessed work for others. Don’t feel pressure to do them all. But doing something is better than nothing. Be patient with yourself. I think back now to when I first heard “Every poem is a love poem.” Today the phrase doesn’t land as corny for me as it once did. Is my passion to reclaim and redirect the trajectory of my life through my voice—and to help others do the same—not, in essence, the very soil within which love poems are rooted? It is.

Every Story Needs Hope

Why You Should Write about Prison

Derek R. Trumbo Sr.

It started out just another day in prison: I shuffled the deck for a game of spades. My opponents had either been cheating or were having one hell of a lucky streak. Or maybe I just sucked at stacking the deck. I was certain I’d gotten all the cards just where I’d wanted them, when everyone stopped talking, eyes wide.

With my back to the window, I smelled the acrid stench of old insulation and smoldering cloth before turning toward the flames. Outside, grown men with faces covered in towels and T-shirts ran every which way. Prisoners were laying waste to the building’s weak points: the windows and doors. I’d later hear that some officers—fearing for their own safety—opened doors and stood back as their prisoners revolted in response to the warden’s lockdown orders. A billowy plume of smoke rose from where the chow hall used to be. A brick exploded against the metal grate barricading the window, and glass shards cascaded through the room. As my opponents rushed out into the chaos, the cards fell to the floor, the king of spades staring up. The entire prison began to riot.

The year was 2009. The aftermath was Kentucky’s costliest riot in history. A friend of mine asked if I could help him put the experience into words for his family. For the first time since my imprisonment, I sat down to capture the havoc and devastation on paper. With pen to paper, my words flowed like the tears I was too ashamed to cry. I’d never before been asked to describe the hell of prison. Why had I resisted depicting my environment for so long? I’d always wanted to be a creator of worlds, an author, an artist with words. Only somewhere along the way, I’d become convinced I wasn’t smart, educated, or articulate enough to say anything someone else would ever give a damn to hear. My dream of being an author was beat down by the poverty I was raised in, my inability to focus on my teachers, their lessons, and my grades, and eventually by the drug addiction I used to mask my inadequacies. Three years into my incarceration, I was asked, “When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?”

It was then I decided to do something different. My pursuits turned to writing. I’d ask any- and everyone for help. I’d finally dream. I’d change! But there was the nagging thought: Would anything I put down on the page make a difference? It was discomforting to not know where to begin, or what I wished to say.

Who was I as a writer? I found myself emulating all of my favorite authors in an attempt to locate my voice. But everything I wrote received the same critiques. Despite my imitation, I wasn’t making the progress I wanted. I still needed to work on my dialogue, characters, and plots. Discouraged, I stopped showing anyone my work. For a time, I stopped writing altogether.

It was only after my success with the riot piece that I felt comfortable enough to want people to read my work again. I felt validated, even if only temporarily. By then, the piece had been published on prisonwriters.com, and now all I had to do was wait. Someone would recognize my greatness, I thought to myself. And someone did—just not in the way I’d imagined it. The friend who I’d written the riot piece for signed me up to join a group from Pioneer Playhouse, a local theater bringing the arts to prison. I was less than thrilled. Though I had zero interest in acting or writing plays, the prison offered nothing else. I took the risk and joined the Voices Inside program.

“Write about what you know,” said the instructor. “Write from the gut.”

“I’m not writing about prison. Nobody gives a damn about prison,” I replied. As it turned out, though my prison riot piece had been published, aside from pats on the back from a few of my fellow inmates and a small fifteen-dollar payment for the article, no one else said a thing about it. I’d bled on the page, and no one seemed to care, or even notice. The other twenty inmates of the very first Voices Inside class all agreed—no one wanted to write about the hell we all woke up to every morning. Instead, we showed up with our knockoffs of popular sitcoms, SNL skits, and all too many thinly veiled retellings of Romeo and Juliet. The work was uninspired. The plays we would go on to write and perform in class all suffered greatly for our avoidance. With excuses of writer’s block, procrastination, and sheer refusal, we were lying to ourselves.

In attempting to tell stories—any stories—to avoid the topic of prison, we weren’t being true to our stories. I decided to set down the heavy sack of shame that I’d lugged around everywhere since my conviction. I wrote a new play in which I spoke of my own incarceration, not as something that had taken my life from me, but as something that had allowed me the time, separation, freedom to examine “my life.” I wasn’t dead. None of us were. And though we’d all been stripped away from our families, our comforts, our routines and were confined to this “new normal,” our lives had not come to an end.

My first prison play involved the very people I’d spend the next twenty-five years locked away from: my children. With myself as the protagonist, I used my children’s hypothetical questions, blame, and confusion over my absence as the antagonist to reveal every truth I’d once steered clear of. Ultimately, guilt and innocence aside, it was my own poor choices that had put me in a prison of my own making.

I staged the play in the crowded classroom we used each week. Desks were moved aside to make an improvised auditorium with a few rows of plastic chairs. The play took place in the span of a visit with my now-grown children—strangers to me, with the names and once-familiar faces of the young people they’d been fifteen years before. I wrote them as tragic characters who’d missed out on the father who had never put down roots, never truly loved their mother, never even attempted to be the man his children needed him to be. In the play, my daughter, the eldest, arrived on the scene to confront me with her anger. How could I ever leave her alone with two small brothers and a drug addict for a mother? Had I been the one to put the pipe to her mother’s lips, the needle in her veins? Did I know about the overdoses? All the strange men who’d found their way into my daughter’s bedroom in the middle of the night? Did I know all of the pain my being incarcerated had caused? Was I happy? Did I know all of the terrible things my children had grown up hearing about me? Did I know?

The man playing my daughter slapped me in the face with her last question before rushing offstage in tears. A voice from the audience called out: “Fucking go after her, man!” But the play ended with my character being restrained by an officer’s single hand.

Afterwards, I sat devastated and exposed. But as I glanced around the room, everyone’s resentment toward the man playing the officer was clear. I could feel them stewing on the same question. How do we begin to comfort the loved ones our decisions have taken us away from?

“That child needed her father,” said the man beside me. “I hate prison,” he said, placing his own comforting hand on my shoulder. “That really happens.”

Eleven years later, I still hear my fellow prisoners complain of having to share the details with those in their lives who know nothing about the realities of prison. No one wants to relive the grief of their incarceration. Ripping off scabs is painful. Their reticence is valid. I am patient. They have to find the courage on their own terms, within their own voices.

But if you ask, I will share. Why write about prison? Every story needs hope. In our stories, we may have started out the murderers, rapists, thieves, and addicts, the monsters, the bad guys, the adversaries, the villains, the defendants, but prison does not have to be the end of our tale. If we don’t write our own endings, we hand our pens over to the legislators, owners of privatized prisons, and propagators of the lies behind mass incarceration. Write about prison because there are more people in prisons in America than populate some small countries. Because your experiences are the experiences of countless others. Write because there is truth in our stories that cannot, must not, be denied: the separation from our families, the toll on our loved ones, all the wasted time, the warehousing of our bodies, and our fruitless efforts to prevail against a flawed reality of incarceration. That is the story we dare everyone to acknowledge. And only we can tell it as it truly is.

Start and End with the Feeling of Home

How I Developed My Poetry Manuscript

Louise K. Waakaa’igan

Finding out that my small collection of poetry, This Is Where, was selected to win the Willow Books chapbook contest, which included professional publication, blew me out of the water. I was beyond ecstatic! It was unreal, almost confusing. I had become a writer. But how did I get to this moment?

Back when I was first incarcerated, I had no idea how to navigate the prison world. It took me years to realize that (a) I was still alive and could live my life, and (b) it was my life, as awful as it felt. I watched other women for clues. I watched how they treated each other, how they interacted with their friends, the women they didn’t like. I watched what they ordered off canteen, which groups they signed up for. After two years of watching, I joined a writers’ workshop, facilitated by Mankwe Ndosi. Though I felt instantly included, I also wanted my freewrites to be so clean and grammatically correct that I missed the concept of free-writing altogether. I did not want the others in the class to look at me while I read my own words—I carried long-held shame, which made me hesitant to call myself a writer. Over time, it was in this circle of women, surrounded and embraced, where I accepted the truth. I had a story to share.

In my adolescence I used pastel-colored ink, swirled my cursive, and wrote naively about true and lasting love. But in prison I wrote to my loved ones who were not around. I wrote so I didn’t cry. I wrote so I wouldn’t scream. So I could laugh. So I would listen. Be kind. Remember. Forget. (I didn’t forget.) I needed to make sense of where I was, who I was, and why and how my life had gotten to the point of being behind bars. It wasn’t a fast or easy revelation. It took me years to accept things that had happened, both my crime and the experiences in my life before my incarceration. For ten years, through Ndosi’s writers’ workshop, I communed weekly with writers who had life sentences, who had children, who had abusive partners, loving parents, addictions, or ten-plus felonies.

In spring 2014 when Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop (MPWW) entered the scene, I quickly learned that this program was not writing-as-therapy. Growing my capacity for craft and professionalism, with these classes also came the expectation that I would carry my own weight. In turn, I was given access to a community of professional writers who valued my contribution and brought in resources such as publication opportunities. When I received the contest information for an outside press running a competition to publish a short poetry collection by an incarcerated woman, my first thought was, There is no way I’ll win this! I’d never won anything, not even a five-dollar scratch-off ticket. Even still, I took my shot.

But before I could enter the Willow Books chapbook contest, I needed a manuscript. I turned first to the poems I believed were the strongest, my own favorites. I gathered those that had won previous contests and those selected for MPWW’s annual anthologies. I chose ones that I worked on in classes and revised with my MPWW poetry mentor, Paige, who also helped me think about my manuscript as a place the reader is traveling through, a journey.

I also saw where the gaps were. It seemed I wrote about experiences prior to incarceration and my crime really well. I could articulate the dreams of who I am, and who I want to be, outside of prison.

It was Paige who showed me that “you’re not talking about today.” At first I bristled at the idea. Well, I’m in hell today! My elder had just passed away, and I was grieving. I was also holding on to the lifeline that I was coming home in less than two years. Though I couldn’t even freewrite through that state, what I could do was come up with a poetic fragment. And I chose to trust that. Eventually, I hodgepodged all those scraps of paper together, rearranging them until I reached the final poem, “Facility Bread.”

The contest requested twenty-eight to thirty-two pieces in the manuscript. I added “Facility Bread” to a portfolio of thirty poems that I laid out on the floor and picked an order by what simply felt right before I asked other women in my writing classes for their opinion. Then, I rearranged it with each suggestion. The dedication in the book—for my mom and son—arrived early in my process. For certain, I knew I wanted to start and end my chapbook with the feeling of home. Ultimately, I chose an emotional journey as the timeline for the book’s structure. It was not linear: In this poem I was twenty-three, I am twenty-seven here, this happened when I was thirty, this connects me to when I was six. I considered the sound and music of each poem as they bled into the next. I weighed if it was more effective to link them thematically, or juxtapose two different time periods and concepts. When I needed a title, something that would simultaneously describe me as I am today, portray who I was yesterday, and show who I am striving to be tomorrow, it was suggested to me that I use one of the poems as the title of the collection. I listened to my internal voice until I knew it in my heart. This Is Where would be my title.

Throughout the entire process, my publisher, Randall Horton, walked alongside me. My core writing community offered significant feedback. Much of it consisted of suggested line breaks and cutting down or removing words, nudging me to be more succinct. I did not accept all of it, but if the ideas of multiple readers lined up, then OK, I thought, maybe I need to listen. I strove to be malleable, yet true to myself in how I presented my story. It helped that much of the revision process was done through paper mail, which allowed some distance. The form wasn’t as intrusive or immediate, and it gave me time to sit with the offerings. Through this, it was important to have multiple copies of each version of the book. I never threw away a previous revision—I kept all ten so I could return to earlier versions and pull back some of the original. Additionally, I was continuing to work on new writing and taking other classes, which tempered my ability to solely invest in this one body of work. It was good to step away.

Last came the packaging. With the cover design, I wanted to showcase artwork done by a Native American artist to reflect my heritage. The press worked on my behalf, and thankfully I was able to choose from a series of beautiful artwork from Dyani White Hawk.

Finally the day came. It was New Year’s Eve 2020 when I walked out of prison. That hell that bound me for so many years was also where, paradoxically, I finally found my own personal freedom. Just footsteps beyond the main door I was knocked down by the rush of an embrace from my twenty-two-year-old son. For minutes that felt like hours, the world fell away. It was just us.

I was fortunate to be welcomed into a supportive network of family and friends where we could celebrate in person. But just months down the road, our world was besieged by the pandemic. So much of our daily lives changed, including that my book launch in Minneapolis was no longer possible. No poets would line up for my signature in the opening pages, no congratulatory hugs. I wasn’t exactly thrilled about releasing my book with a digital reading. On a bigger scale, unrest was brewing in the Twin Cities due to the murder of George Floyd. Because of the tensions in the metro area, we weren’t positive if it was the appropriate timing to celebrate. Then I thought, though I can’t save our world, I can contribute my portion. We proceeded. June 15, 2020, became one of the best experiences in my life. Seventy-some individuals separately-together supported my first book launch. I had a few close friends with me quietly sitting in the next room watching on their own computers. I knew who I wanted to read alongside me immediately, and those I asked said yes. During the night of, my mother interrupted me on screen to say that despite some of the sad memories I was revealing through my poetry, I, in fact, had a great childhood. She shared a few of her memories in the way only a mother could. The true star of the night, she was stunning.

Now that I am published, it doesn’t mean that I’m done or have reached the writing pinnacle. I have learned to respect both the discipline and the craft of writing. It would take me years, decades even, to fully step into this role of writer, of poet. Even now, with a finished chapbook in hand, I am still learning. And I got here thanks to the wild and eclectic, ever-growing gathering of writers from zip code to zip code, who envelop me into this powerful realm of discipline, creativity, honesty, and community. I am here because someone showed up. And in return, I choose to show up as well.

On Writing and Staging a Play in Prison

Sterling Cunio

There are eight of us masked up and ready to perform. As soon as we get the call, it’s go-time. There’s no turning back, we’ve been waiting for a chance like this all summer. Before the phone rings, I give the crew some last-minute instructions.

“Project your voice,” I tell Ben, who typically speaks in a whisper. “When they hear you they need to know you mean business.

“Randal, don’t try no slick shit neither,” I say to a buddy in the group who thinks he’s smoother than he is. “We can’t mess this up.”

The phone rings and we glance at each other nervously. This is it. We’re about to do a telephonic performance of a scene from the play Austin’s Echo.

The best thing to happen in my career as a writer was receiving the prestigious PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship in 2019 to produce Austin’s Echo, an original play about a modern-day prisoner haunted by the ghost of Austin Reed, the first African American to write a memoir about his incarceration in Auburn State Prison in the mid-1800s. The story demonstrates the unchanging function of prison across a two-hundred-year time span. I’ve been working on it for months and am about to share a scene from it for the first time on a conference call with fellowship mentor Baba Israel and Caits Meissner, PEN America’s director of Prison and Justice Writing.

“I’m placing you on speakerphone now,” says the prison staff facilitating the call.

Getting institutional approval for the call was no easy task. By design, prison administrators are trained to anticipate the worst outcome imaginable, so any possible problem is enough to say no to a special request. Sometimes they’re denied simply because the prison hasn’t done it before, and my vision for staging Austin’s Echo is ambitious. For performances inside the prison, there will be a mixed cast of prisoners and civilians. Performances in theaters beyond the wall will include post-performance panel discussions with criminal-reform advocates. To collaborate with community actors and volunteers, authorization for them to access the prison is necessary. Additionally, we will need time and space for rehearsal and staging.

Of course, not all projects require the institution’s buy-in. Indeed, the ability to resist silencing is one of the greatest freedoms writing can empower. Yet, behind walls, if you want to develop something beyond the page, you need permission, and it is paramount to be as transparent as possible with your intent, while simultaneously highlighting all potential benefits to the institution. So I approached the institution’s chaplains and requested permission to start a theater group. Handing them a copy of the project proposal, along with the letter announcing my fellowship, I explained how this would be a great opportunity to bring guys together and enhance the social skills necessary for theater, such as listening, working together, commitment, dedication, and more. In this instance, they would be providing pro-social opportunities. The play would foster hard work and constructive focus, while the fellowship deadlines would require taking responsibility for fulfilling commitments. Permission was granted on the condition that a community volunteer was willing to come inside and supervise. An easy requirement, since I’d already secured the commitment of multiple artists and actors willing to help out.

“Just let me have the guys introduce themselves real quick so you can associate voices with characters,” I say after confirming Baba and Caits are on the line. I nod at the cast to begin. The group is excited and I’m nervous. These are professionals on the phone, and knowing I’ve been working on the project for over six months, they have high expectations.

Before telling you about the process of bringing a play to life, you should know this isn’t some feel-good lollipop-inspirational “you can do it” speech written by a life-on-easy-street outsider trying to jack you up on hope dope. No, I’m just like you. Born to a woman shackled to a hospital bed and an unknown father, I was a mulatto bastard seemingly fated to state captivity. After becoming an orphan at age twelve, I entered the culture of street crime and violently spun out of control until I was sentenced to life without parole at sixteen years old. Although I’ve ceased being criminally active, I’ve never betrayed prisoner codes, and after twenty-six years of incarceration I remain in good standing among solid peers. I tell you these things so you can understand me clearly—I know the struggle.

I began writing in the hole to exorcise demons and discovered a knack for poetry. I started taking advantage of any opportunity I could find to enhance my writing skills. After entering a challenging writing group led by author Lauren Kessler, I submitted my work to the PEN Prison Writing Contest and applied for fellowships. Although I’m an emotional writer whose prose is fueled by feelings, my most significant writing effort to date, Austin’s Echo, is based on two hundred years of history.

“Today, we will be performing the third scene, which takes place in a prison workshop. Can you hear us?” I ask into the phone sitting on the floor between the eight of us crammed into a small office wearing our Covid masks.

The initial plan was to focus solely on research for two months and then start writing, but after reading advice from another fellow in the program, I began writing while researching and let the story evolve with the information. I was prepared to contact dozens of people before locating a single person willing to assist my endeavor—the key to being resourceful as a prisoner is unrelenting effort—so I contacted experts in areas related to the project and held faith. By sending countless letters and emails and placing calls to various people, I was finally able to connect with the head of Willamette University’s theater department, who proofread my material, provided books and advice, and introduced me to a set designer. I arranged a meeting with a folk music historian about the chain gang songs included in the performance and worked with a census researcher to gather information on Auburn State Prison staff in 1821.

While writing, I shared multiple drafts with trusted advisers and sought their feedback. Since I consistently heard there was too much historical exposition in my drafts for a drama piece, I added multiple musical and rhythmic elements. I enlisted the support of a professional musician, Rich McCloud, who was kind enough to volunteer his time in support of the project. Though there are people inside the prison musically talented enough to be professionals, because of prison’s volatility, it’s more important to prioritize reliability over raw talent. A single person’s misstep can jeopardize the whole project, as prisons often practice group punishment and don’t hesitate to shut down the activities of many due to the misdeeds of one. Furthermore, having witnessed on multiple occasions strong work ethic out-succeed raw talent, I selected a group of hardworking guys with sufficient skills who would faithfully show up to rehearsal and work hard at the training Rich gave us.

In February, we began meeting once a week, and the coaching was world class. There was no doubt the play’s musical elements would be among the best. Then Covid-19 struck, and the prison stopped allowing visitor access and group activities. After only four meetings, we lost our professional coaching. To make matters more difficult, the restrictions meant we could no longer practice as a group.

But today we’re going to attempt to sing an eight-part harmony.

“Be my woman, gal, I’ll—” sings out De’anthony, who’s leading the group in a call-and-response chain gang version of the song “Rosie.”

“—be your man,” the group responds. Cornelius, a drummer, slaps a beatbox on a wooden stool.

I think we sound good. Prior to the call, I actually considered skipping the song since there’s no quicker way to make a bad impression than sounding like shit. Baba’s a professional musician, and we’re a bunch of guys banging out beats on lids. But since Baba had spent time reading and thinking about the pieces, and I had already told Caits about the music, I decided to leave it in the performance; it’s important to deliver on what you say. This may seem basic “word is bond” knowledge, but when you are trying to get established, it’s mandatory to meet deadlines and demonstrate a reliability worthy of people’s faith. Following through on previous projects has opened up doors to further opportunities such as public readings, inclusion in art events, and a chance to share a piece in this book for my peers.

We make it through the song and move into a debate between characters about whether systemic conditions influence behavior more than personal choice. The dialogue has a spoken word cadence that relies on rhythm and timing to drive theatrical action.

“There’s parts of this country so poor, if cats don’t hustle they don’t eat,” calls out De’anthony’s character.

“FACTS,” says the group in unison.

“Got poor country bumpkins out in the hills and swamps living in hand-me-down trailers and eating turtle soup.”

“FACTS.”

“People living in city projects where there’s nothing but crime and violence for blocks upon blocks.”

“FACTS.”

A half hour later, we’ve made it through the scene without any miscues or blunders. Looking around the tiny office, I’m proud of the guys, and can see they also feel a sense of accomplishment. Covid wasn’t our only challenge. Just three weeks ago the prison eased some restrictions that would have allowed us time to practice together. Until that point I had been meeting with guys individually wherever we could connect for a few minutes on the yard, in the chow hall, at work. But as soon as the restrictions relaxed, the worst wildfires in Oregon’s history broke out in the county where four of the state’s fourteen prisons are located—including the one we’re in. Three prisons were evacuated and brought to the state penitentiary for emergency housing. Rival gangs immediately fell into violent conflict, prompting lockdowns in cells filled with smoke as thick as fog. By the time things returned to the usual-weird, we had only two one-hour rehearsal sessions before today’s call. Now we’re all sitting eagerly awaiting the listeners’ response.

“Yo, that was incredible,” says Baba. “Your timing on some of those parts was remarkable.” His comments cause the actors to break out in smiles and fist bump each other.

“You really brought alive the camaraderie you guys share,” says Caits. “I feel like I was able to experience what life is like inside. You made the moments accessible.”

We spent the rest of the hour receiving feedback. The call galvanized the commitment of the inside cast and assured them of our ability to pull together the material. And this is just the beginning. When the pandemic is over, I will be working with my friend and mentor, Phil Stockton, to get the play produced in community venues. Eventually, I’ll market the script.

One of my greatest hopes is to be an inspirational example for my peers, particularly those in the direst of conditions who remain determined to improve their existence. I write this for you. To assure you writing can create possibility and opportunities capable of transcending the walls that hold us. Just remember to write while you research, be relentless in your pursuit of allies, always keep your word, show benefit to the community, prioritize reliability in collaborators, be transparent, seek honest feedback, and most importantly, be diligent and patient.

Gift Culture

On Collaborating through the Walls

Spoon Jackson

I sat in the far corner of the basement classroom and placed two empty desks around me. Sometimes I sat out on the stairs in the hall across from the class. I always wore dark shades even at night. I did not want anyone to steal my eyes. And yet, I never missed a poem read or any words said.

It was only after nearly a year in her poetry class that Judith Tannenbaum saw me without my shades, when we met for an individual consultation. She asked me where I was from and was delighted and shocked when a whole description of the High Desert came out. I spoke of the weather being ninety degrees hotter, of sparrows singing, and how when I stood on Crooks Street and looked at the purple and red clay mountains that surrounded me, they appeared to be the whole world.

Judith wrote down and read my words back to me. We collected my thoughts into a poem on the page: “Heart of the High Desert.” I had been speaking in poems and did not know it. That was my first collaboration. From that day on Judith and I met every Monday, and I brought poems, or poem-thoughts, and together, we shaped them.

It took me nine years in my bid to discover Judith’s poetry class. When I stumbled into that basement classroom, I knew I was home. Here, my poems began to connect me with other artists. The first and most influential was, of course, Judith herself, who understood our shared kinship and never showed any fear—or conversely, saviorism. Sometimes others questioned Judith’s motives for teaching in prison. Of course I, too, noticed that Judith was a woman—a white woman in an all-male prison, in a nearly all-Black poetry class. But though Judith and I had very different lives, we innately believed in each other.

After many years of working together in the classroom, I suggested we write a joint memoir. Judith agreed, suggesting we pen alternating chapters, and after about two years, our book By Heart was born. Once the manuscript was complete, Judith pulled the strings, and By Heart was published by New Village Press in 2010.

Writing enabled me to fly, crash, and barrel through walls. On the other side were artists in the free world. Since my poems were first published in the tenth annual Arts in Corrections anthology, opportunities have flown in—many of them thanks to Judith. Most instrumental was Shakespearean-trained actor and director Jan Jonson, who came from Sweden in 1987 to direct Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot at San Quentin. Jan had already read my chapbook—a small collection of poetry, typeset in the prison and published in Judith’s class, where we called our mini-press Month of Mondays—and he wanted me to play Pozzo. We trained for nearly a year before we staged the production for visiting international audiences, along with our fellow prisoners. When Jan went back to Sweden he developed a play, Moments of Reality, based on the experience, which opened and closed with my poems. Thanks to the simple choice Jan made to give out my address at the end of the show, I received many letters and offers to collaborate from across the ocean, especially Sweden, Norway, and Germany.

These three experiences: Judith’s class, our shared memoir, and the Moments of Reality play inspired a cascade of other connections, but it was up to me to sustain them. Connections can seem to be made of magic, the ineffable substance of emotions. Tracing back to how this extraordinary journey began helped to clarify my philosophy, and the guiding principles of engagement that helped my collaborations flourish. Here are some standout lessons.

Respect the boundaries: A connection can be limited when an artist in prison sees the free-world artist as a means to an end—the waters can become muddy and the magic and growth will be limited. Every person who passes the gates offers the possibility of shared humanity. We must see them all as fellow artists with visions to share. In turn, though I know some of the rules in prison are silly, hurtful, or only in place to dehumanize, I would have never asked Judith—or any of my other collaborators—to break one. Nor would she have offered. She reminded me that we are all students and teachers in life. Within this clear space of connection, my writing can demand and welcome honesty from myself and others.

Take chances on unlikely new relationships: Taking the risk to put yourself in the world often leads to organic opportunities that begin to open unexpected doors. A young woman named Anna “Neah” Olsson—now a thriving singer-songwriter and engineer—was just eighteen when we connected in 1999. After seeing Jan’s show, Anna’s first letter to me declared that we will be songwriting partners, and the envelope included pictures, music, and song lyrics to get us started. I, apparently, had no choice! Though Anna was young, she was bold. She became my first songwriting partner. I was moved when Anna sent a copy of a CD with her music set to my lyrics. In response to one letter, when Anna felt really low, I wrote a song called “Star.” She loved it. So much, in fact, that during the charity-focused music competitions Anna produced in Sweden, she used it for the up-and-coming artists to sing.

Cultivate divine patience: My friend Eva appreciated my poetry and often looked for ways to share it. Singing in a Swedish choir inspired her to share my poems with the choir director. It was a nice gesture, and made me feel good, but as often happens, nothing materialized. It was two years later that I finally heard from Stefan Säfsten. A surprise to me, he had been working on music for my poems, a suite named “Freedom for the Prisoners,” and had waited until he had the finished product before he contacted me. Not long after, Stefan raised enough money to bring the entire Swedish choir to America, some forty members, and they performed the music at San Quentin and New Folsom prisons. Even the San Francisco Orchestra came inside to play the music! It was an out-of-body experience, as if the walls had melted and there I was at a concert in Sweden, my own stories singing back to me.

Share opportunities with others inside: At New Folsom I had the opportunity to teach a creative writing class. I had my own style, but I also adopted some of Judith’s and another former instructor, Dianna Henning’s, lessons. I shared my own poem-annotations as examples that I had produced in Dianna’s class, and one of my students loved one so much that he transferred away with it! To further develop my curriculum, I used ideas from books and brought in texts for my students to write about. We held heated conversations on current events. Sharing the gift of inside/out collaboration, I met professors who invited my students in prison to answer questions from their free-world students.

Through being a member of the Arts in Corrections community, I not only taught, but I also benefited. Radio host Cheri Snook from KVMR started bringing extraordinary artists to New Folsom, including CDs by the famous edgy folk singer Ani DiFranco. I was blown away by her unique, organic style. In my own classroom, I played her songs as examples of how poetry must be personal to be universal. I thought it would be groundbreaking to meet Ani—a wish that only came true in my dreams.

Believe deeply in the worth of your own gifts: Around 2009, singer-songwriter and musician Zoe Boekbinder came to New Folsom to record different styles of music and spoken word in collaboration with the men inside. Zoe was totally original—she was known for playing the typewriter as an instrument. Soon after her Prison Music Project began, I was transferred from New Folsom to Lancaster prison in LA County, cutting off my opportunity to participate.

About two years later, Zoe contacted me about the project. She no longer volunteered at New Folsom, freeing her up to collaborate directly. I called her on the phone often, where sometimes she sang, and I recited poetry. One day I called Zoe and she surprised me. Someone wanted to speak to me, she said. Zoe connected our call and I could recognize her voice anywhere. Ani DiFranco said hello.

Thanks to Zoe sharing my poetry, Ani and I became instant friends. Zoe passed along a copy of my poem “Nowhere but Barstow and Prison,” and Ani set it to music. I understood then that the walls are just that—walls. When we shut our eyes, we are fellowshipping. We are together in the realm of art, in the atmosphere somewhere, wherever we need to be.

Keep learning and growing: When the San Quentin administration asked a fellow writer to recommend other prisoners for a new audio training radio program run by KALW public radio, he gave my name. Through this program we learned new skills on how to produce and engineer for our show Uncuffed. After hearing one of our shows, a radio journalist, Matthew Schneeman out of New York, contacted me. Our friendship led us to partner on a podcast of our own, At Night I Fly.

These are just a handful of the many fruitful and life-sustaining collaborations I’ve been a part of. Through this long journey, I have learned that yes, my dreams, aspirations, love, and imagination can be tapped into just the same as any writer on the streets. And yes, it is also true that writing from a physical prison can tap into a different river that flows into the heart and soul like no other place on earth. Understanding the light I offer by seeing my creativity as a gift gave me language for how important it is that I share my work with others. In this environment, I must keep my spirit and imagination nourished, and collaboration has become my food.

If the connection between two artists is real, it never stops flowing, growing, transforming, and connecting. Jan, for well over twenty years now, still stages his Moments of Reality play. And though Judith died in 2019, she still comes to visit me in spirit and in dreams. In this way, we are still collaborating.

As for the Rest of Us

How to Win a Fellowship with No Support

Arthur Longworth

I love reading about writing groups and creative writing classes in prison, especially ones led by people who have credentials in the writing world. I’ve read about groups of incarcerated writers led by Wally Lamb, Lauren Kessler, Piper Kerman, and others. There’s actually a mountain of books and other writing that comes from, and is about, writing groups and classes in prison—so much, I imagine it must seem to people outside prison that everyone inside has access to the opportunity. I’m not a person outside prison, however—so I’m not subject to that illusion. In here, you realize there are really only a handful of prisons popular with people outside. Usually they’re not far from an urban center and have an administration open to allowing outsiders in. Then there’s the rest of us.

I can’t tell you what it feels like to be in a prison where a literary luminary nurtures a community of writers and lights a path forward for you. But I can tell you what it feels like to try to write in a filthy, overcrowded, turn-of-the-century-before-last prison where you ain’t got shit and there’s literally no hope of you being able to accomplish anything. It’s the experience of being buried. Maybe that’s why I like to read about writing groups and classes in prison—so I can try to imagine what it feels like not to be buried.

Being thrown away behind prison walls with no one to share your ideas or work with, or to validate your endeavor to write, causes an irrepressible question to rise within you: What the hell makes you think you can write anything? And the internal doubt fomented by the question is infinitely worse if you were sent to prison young and you lack education. The self-questioning and doubt don’t rise only a single time, like a rancorous guard you can get around and be done with. Rather, they loom in front of you every time, no matter how much or how often you write. They’re nagging at me this very moment.

If you’re lucky, you’ll find a writing opportunity that speaks to you—into which you’re willing to commit everything you have. Like how I felt when I first read that the PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship “aims to harness the power of writers and writing in bearing witness to the societal consequences of mass incarceration.” Try to edge past your self-doubt, even if you have to start by just pretending you’re a writer. Navigate the application process, and pay special attention to every detail of the instructions because they’re there for a reason (and not following them can get you instantly disqualified). Remember—like you do when you walk out onto the exercise yard of that filthy, overcrowded, hopeless-ass prison you’ve thus far managed to survive—ain’t nobody you can count on but yourself. And that’s OK.

Submit the application package, and if you aren’t accepted or you fail to win the grant or fellowship, try to exercise grace. Use the experience as an opportunity to build your resolve and reset your commitment to write. Do not rush off a petulant letter to the organization to decry how crushed you are that you didn’t win. Which, I’m ashamed to admit, is something I’ve done.

If you reapply at a later date, do not use the same verbatim project proposal. This requires the creative element of writing. Rework your application, and maybe narrow the scope of subject matter. For instance, in my project proposal, I zealously committed to tackle the entire institutional failure of mass incarceration. In the next application, I more modestly pledged to address the specific pipeline that delivered me and everyone I grew up with into this Beast. I think my second project proposal was better, and more realistic, than the first. A panel of judges apparently thought so, too.

Be open to whatever outcome, including success. Because it can happen. You may shake uncontrollably when you learn your project is accepted, or you may cry. Which would be understandable because what you accomplished is so fucking hard to do from where you are. And, if you did it, you did it with nothing. Bravo.

Below is my awarded Writing for Justice proposal, along with some notes, but word of warning, don’t lift this. Plagiarism is not taken kindly to. Always make it fiercely your own.

Brief Project Description: Journal of a State-Raised Prisoner in the Age of Mass Incarceration is a book-length compilation of creative nonfiction essays that elucidates the foster-care-to-prison pipeline. The essays walk readers through the experience of being raised by the State, committing a violent crime immediately upon “aging out” of the foster care system, receiving a mandatory Life Without Parole sentence, and navigating the prison system. Through the voice of a state-raised prisoner, this project deftly narrates integral facets of prison and the singular experience of long-term incarceration in the era of mass incarceration.

Project Proposal: Journal of a State-Raised Prisoner in the Age of Mass Incarceration is a book-length compilation of creative non-fiction essays that elucidates the juncture between the foster care system and the singular experience of long-term incarceration in the era of mass incarceration. The essays walk readers through the experience of being raised by the State, committing a violent crime upon “aging out” of the foster care system, receiving a mandatory Life Without Parole sentence, and navigating a prison system in which nearly everyone I grew up with in state boys’ homes was sent to prison. Through the voice of a state-raised prisoner, this project deftly narrates integral facets of prison, such as: induction into prison; violence inside the walls; solitary confinement; racism; institutionalization; educating oneself in an environment in which formal education is denied; writing; and more.

The foster care system is an institution sown with distinct hallmarks of life experience that are often compounded within young people in the form of trauma and social disabilities that make foster youth more likely to become incarcerated than any other population. Yet, most work published about foster care is written by writers who never had to endure the system themselves. The same is true for work published about prison—most is written by the unincarcerated. A periphery is authored by the formerly incarcerated. But few eminent voices have arisen—or, perhaps, been viewed by mainstream publishers as legitimate enough to be allowed to rise—from the mass incarcerated ourselves. My voice, and project, will change that.

In writing about prison, I have an edge over unincarcerated writers. The foster-care-to-prison pipeline and its relation to mass incarceration isn’t merely a subject I write about; it’s sewn into my flesh and bones. I was sent to prison as a foster youth, and I’ve been incarcerated for 35 years with a Life Without Parole sentence in Washington State, which means I’ve spent every day of my adult life behind these walls. I’m able to articulate not just what prison looks like, but how it feels.

Currently, 50,000 words of this project are completed—6 of the essays in the compilation have won PEN Prison Writing Awards, and one was nominated in 2017 for the Pushcart Prize. During the 8-month creation portion of the Fellowship, I will complete another 20,000 words of honed prose, as well as revise and edit the existing essays. I’m open to any offer of resource or mentorship, especially if PEN were to partner me with an editor.

My project is aimed at the literary world—specifically, writers and aficionados of literature with a social conscience. Readers will be drawn into the subject matter through engagement with, and even astonishment at, the caliber of writing. The book is for every literatist who understands that mass incarceration is a societal ill, but who has no compelling piece of contemporary literature he or she can hold up and say, “This is why.” The reader’s first discovery upon opening the book will be, incarceration aside, that I am a writer. That is, although I was sent to one of the most brutal and murderous prisons in the US as an aged-out foster youth with only a 7th-grade education and against all odds taught myself to write, no writer can read my work and not recognize that but for the grace, or disgrace, of circumstance, I’m not really different than you. And you, brother or sister writer, could easily have been me.

The idea behind this project is that the most effective way to ignite conversation about the societal consequences of mass incarceration is to inform and engage the nation’s literary community in its own language. That is, by showing—not telling. This project, through the conversations it initiates, has the potential to spur a reexamination of the purpose of incarceration in this country. A specific example might be that lawmakers in a rising tide of states are pushed to enact legislation to create a fair process of sentence review for prisoners with lifelong sentences who committed their crimes under influence of the mitigating factor of youth (i.e., those who were sent to prison under the age of 21— or even 25—before their brains were fully developed), and to reduce the use of long-term solitary confinement in prison.

Biographical Context: [Writing about work I’ve completed and about the accolades the work has received was an opportunity to recount for the reviewers my history of dependability. I imagined that the reviewers wanted to pick fellows they believe have the ability to successfully complete their projects. I saw the “Biographical Context” section as an opportunity to share with application reviewers my connection with, and my stake in, the subject matter of my project. I don’t think it’s about where you come from as much as it is about how where you come from is connected with where you want to go in your project. After my creative bio, not included here, I wrote the following, which leveraged a quote from a previously published work.]

But Arthur didn’t always write. He grew up in the foster care system in Washington State, which means that the State raised him in its network of notorious boys’ homes, including one the Seattle Times dubbed a “house of horrors.” The State turned him out onto the streets at 16 years old without money, an education, or job training. He has a Life Without Parole sentence and has been incarcerated since he was 18. Arthur’s ability to write grew out of a process of self-education—an experience he describes in one of his early published works. “When I was sent to prison . . . I had only a 7th-grade education and didn’t read or write very well. I wanted to go to school, which was something that was not available to me before I came to prison, but I soon discovered I wasn’t allowed to attend school inside either. Prison officials said it would be a waste of time and resources to educate me because I have a life sentence. At that point, I didn’t know if it was possible for me to learn—if I had the same abilities as others—but I had made up my mind to try, so I set out to educate myself. I went to the prison library and began to check out books. It was a small library and poorly stocked, but I read everything I could . . . biography, history, philosophy, language.” (The Prison Diary of A.L. #299180, 18)

Work Sample: [I wanted to submit a sample of writing (seven to ten pages) that I felt was the most relevant to the subject matter of my proposed project. I wanted to “show,” not simply to “tell.” I felt it was important that the panel of reviewers experience firsthand my capacity to engage the subject I proposed to write about.]

References: [This is an indispensable part of the prework of applying for a fellowship. It’s never too early to start thinking about—and putting time and energy into developing—relationships with others in the field of your craft. Who can attest to your ability and dedication? A professor, journalist, editor, or author you’ve previously worked with?]

“Prison Writer”

A Meditation on Histories and the Sentences That Create Them

Justin Rovillos Monson

Are we going to be consigned forever to tell the same kinds of stories?

Saidiya Hartman

In darkness, mine was not a linear condition.

Justin Phillip Reed

You live in a house. The house is not small, but for years now the living spaces have felt crowded. In the house there is a locked room, and in that locked room you perform all of your daily rituals. You spend entire days in the locked room. You possess the only key. There is a force that tethers you to your desk in the locked room, like a handcuff made of air.

When you have visitors, you host them in the kitchen. They become your friends. Yet, through all the time spent, your visitors cannot stop looking at the door to the locked room. You have conversations, you read poetry aloud, you lose arguments. You fall in love, you get drunk, you laugh. And still they keep looking and looking and looking. In the lulls between conversations, they ask about the room. They want to talk about it, understand it, know how it feels. You want to give them everything they ask for. You want them to stay awhile, see how things go. You pace the floor and pour out the contents of your heart and mind in hopes that you might make sense of the room—for them, but also for yourself, if you can admit it.

When the sun begins to set, your visitors must return to their homes in the cities you dream of. You help them with their coats and watch them as they walk into the crisp autumn air.

That story is unbelievable . . . what a fighter . . . I can’t even imagine. . . how brave. . . . These stories need to be heard. . . .

You return to the locked room. You sit at your desk and continue to translate a single sentence on a single sheet of paper, written in a language you still do not, after all the years, understand.

***

I don’t know what to say. I am tired. I am tired of prison, I am tired of being a “prison writer.” I am tired of spending my years describing to the visitors in my life what lies behind the locked door. In the world beyond the walls—largely driven by algorithms and calculated desire—I feel a strange smugness in believing that any hunger for my work is predicated on my physically being in a cage, or at least on the authenticity of my experiences in prison. After all, consumers chase what they desire, and marketers create and feed those desires. That’s how commerce—physical, digital, spiritual, or otherwise—works. So, what’s the issue?

Prison invades. It penetrates, permeates. The moment prison or any of its necessary by-products are brought into a passage, the moment a reader is made aware that the writer is or once was in chains, the register shifts. Readers find themselves connecting the dots, threading together the textual and biographical to create a line of logic. And therein lies the issue: prison as an entity and system looms over my writing so much that readers might not be able to separate “prison” from “writer.” To be fair, I struggle to separate the two myself, hard as I try. Who wants a poetics of anti-biography anyway?

***

Tree hundred pages. Ten packets of thirty. My Presentence Investigation—the official document compiled by the state of Michigan to make sentencing recommendations based upon the facts of a crime, as well as the history of the convicted—had cost me thirty dollars out of my inmate trust account. There in my hands, violence reduced. Felons and writers know this curriculum too well. Both recognize that the key to a plausible narrative—and perhaps freedom—is not an abundance of information, but focus. In other words: not every story will be told. In other words: redaction becomes its own language.

My plan was to create a series of erasure poems that examined the robbery I committed at sixteen. I thought that, by distilling the institutional language down to its component parts, I might begin to make sense of my own history and understand the man I would become.

For months I struggled. How to trace the genealogy of a crime? How to redact without forcing silence upon those I’ve damaged? How to translate and expand the narrative, its sentences? I settled on weaving vignettes and personal history among the newly fragmented investigation. (Perhaps that is an apt way to describe all investigations—fragmented.) In the end, I wasn’t sure that I had uncovered any great truth or spiritual redemption. Almost ten years into a sixteen-year sentence, I was still in prison, somehow writing poems that would earn me publications and fellowships, but not the thing I thought I was writing toward: freedom.

My efforts were not without fruit, though. I had reread and reckoned with the investigation that led to my sentence, the epigraph that contextualized the years that would follow. Via redaction, I had told the same kind of story over and over—in a cage, for what feels like forever. Via addition, I blurred the edges of what was not, but to so many appeared to be, a linear condition. In the end, even though all the previous currency was lost, and through my translation, a message was left.

***

Prison plants itself and grows. Prison fractures and fragments, a sentence creating a before and an after. In my work, I’ve tried to document my history, tried to redact and add and translate and reclaim in hopes of creating a universe where I am neither martyr nor menace, neither rampant sinner nor rogue saint, where I do not have to explain my daily living with a cluster of disparate metaphors. In this universe, my history would not be read as a fractured story of redemption. In this universe, I could speak of the darkest cage and still people would not hear a prison. When I woke up this morning, I did not—could not, yet—create that universe.

***

In the house there is a room. You spend entire days in the room. Though you possess the only key, you have started to leave the door open at all times. There is a force that keeps you going, that pushes you along.

Your friends cannot stop looking at the door to the room. You tell them how it feels, and though you can tell they do not fully understand, they nod their heads and they stay for a while.

When they return to their homes, they walk slowly and watch a flock of geese fly overhead. They look back and wave goodbye—Talk to you soon! You wave back.

You return to the room. You sit at your desk and you begin to write around a single sentence on a single sheet of paper, written in a language that will be but a string of symbols in the longer arc of your history.

Introduction

Caits Meissner with Liza Jessie Peterson

When Liza Jessie Peterson—an artist and advocate who has written about, performed in, and taught in numerous prisons and jails across the United States—shared her facilitation style over email, she opened with an oldie but goodie: “I always start with writing prompts to get the creative juices flowing. The first exercise is a five- to seven-minute freewrite. This helps open the floodgates, gets the writer to not judge themselves because there is no thinking, just nonstop writing. There is no time to edit or get stuck thinking, ‘Oh, this doesn’t sound right.’”

Her offering is a simple but poignant piece of advice that echoes across many essays in this book that proclaim the same: Just start writing and don’t stop.

Liza continues:

I Remember . . . is a memory exercise that can tap into childhood, into yesterday, a grandma memory, a high school memory, a writer can go anywhere with it, and the object is to write without stopping. Let the memories flow and jump all over from past to current or wherever the mind goes. If the participant gets stuck I just tell them to write the previous line or the last word they wrote over and over again until another thought or memory pops into their mind. It works like magic and it also provides some repetition, which is always rhythmically funky. After seven minutes, I stop and let participants share.

And with the inclusion of that last sentence, emphasis on the word share, Liza moves this act of writing out of isolation and into community. A writing prompt is an indispensable tool in the writer’s arsenal. It can be used effectively to push and stretch the brain by either an individual or a group. But a prompt can become disappointingly blunt in a communal setting if not sharpened with considered pedagogy, the specific and articulated methods and approaches to teaching that each facilitator develops in the course of their practice. Liza offers not just a tool, but also a glimpse of her pedagogical framework: “Because many memories can be painful and can bring up past trauma, I like to end with a prompt that almost always elicits laughter, which is a way to heal the circle and have participants leave with the energy of joy. The funniest shit was. . . My most embarrassing moment was when . . .”

In these few brief sentences, Liza illustrates the skill of a seasoned facilitator who reads the room, anticipates the participants’ needs, and creates a flexible boundary in which honesty and creativity can flourish. Of course, a writing community is not limited to classrooms or writing groups. It can happen informally between two friends sharing poem drafts on the yard. It happens in workplaces, on stages, and on the page through letters, anthologies, and collaborative projects.

Reading this chapter, I wonder, what if Zeke Caligiuri, who writes about his cofounding the Stillwater Writers’ Collective, had never created this sacred space for so many to step into? Zeke is no longer at Stillwater, but his legacy has opened space for new generations of writers. Conversely, what if a writer as isolated as Arthur Longworth describes in the previous chapter had Zeke’s blueprint? The following pages further illuminate not only the importance of a thriving creative community but also how to cultivate it from right where you stand.

Sure, you could wait and see if a lucky someone might show up and decide to teach a writing class in your facility—but what if this majestic facilitator never arrives? As poet June Jordan wrote, there is no savior on the horizon, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.” And so, the other option is: you organize.

On Building Prison Writing Communities

Zeke Caligiuri

In 2016, while I was still incarcerated, the University of Minnesota Press published This Is Where I Am, my memoir about growing up in South Minneapolis during the violence of the 1990s. There was a long, difficult path taken both personally and communally to get to this point. Personally, it has taken twenty years of incarceration, several targeted facility transfers and administrative segregation trips, the death of both parents—and subsequently every other member of my family—to be able to honestly put the words down on a piece of paper: I am a working writer!

But plenty has been said of the solitary nature of confinement and the sorting out of the individual soul; we often neglect to illuminate the social and communal aspect of life in prison. Most importantly, while the book may have borne my name, it was the fruit of the vast literary and intellectual landscape within the incarcerated population of Minnesota.

I am part of a cohort of incarcerated writers and artists that created the Stillwater Writers’ Collective (SWC), which was originally situated at the Stillwater Correctional Facility in Minnesota. The SWC is the first recognized all-prisoner-created and prisoner-run writers’ collective in the country (that we know of). What started with a small group of mostly long-term prisoners at the hundred-plus-year-old prison has blossomed into prisoner-run collectives, all with their own personalities and directions, at virtually every facility in the state. Over the past decade, our state has maintained an ongoing prison writing program through a wonderful organization called the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop (MPWW), which brings writing classes and mentors into all of the state’s facilities. It is the sort of program I wish had existed when I first came down. This essay details the hero’s journey it took to develop the SWC and offers some ideas about how you might start your own writing community.

I was fortunate, many years back, to be welcomed into the Stillwater Poetry Group (SPG), which brought an eclectic grouping of local poets into the facility to offer encouragement and instruction. It was the first time I noticed how, especially in incarcerated situations, artists and writers somehow find each other—like gravitational pull. This was also when I realized that if I was going to see myself as a writer, I needed to be in community with other writers.

But during the first few years of my bid, we went from a system with seemingly plentiful educational opportunities to one that saw a dramatic funding shift. Conservative emphasis changed focus to the reinforcement of the security culture, and to elements of the prison system that could be privatized: canteen/commissary, food service, health service. SPG was a casualty of the education shutdown, dispersing the best and the brightest talent in the prison. The group tried to maintain itself by passing each others’ work around from unit to unit, doing remote workshopping. But the computers went dark and the work we’d compiled for our anthology became irretrievable. Soon, transfers thinned out what seemed to be the start of something life-changing. I was left again with only myself, and books, and notebooks full of restarts and dogged ideas—and an understanding that we had been much more powerful as a group than as scattered individuals.

Several program-thin years later, I took part in classes being offered by two very prominent liberal arts professors, Dr. Deborah Appleman and Dr. John Schmit. These classes opened the door for a successful reading—staged in the education department for an audience of prisoners, invited staff, and prison admin—that would later act as an event template and led to the publication of an anthology from Student Initiative Press titled From the Inside Out: Letters to Young Men and Other Writings. Both the reading and the publishing credit were examples to us of the kind of power that collective creativity could produce.

Power, though, can arouse fear and suspicion from the ruling class. And so, even with support from our education director, and while a book with our work circulated the country, the professors were denied access back into the prison. We had lost another set of advocates. The professors left with the implicit instruction for me to write a book I wasn’t sure I was capable of writing.

Confronted with the no-man’s-land of another stretch of unproductive years, however, I chose to leave a job with an abnormal amount of (relative) freedom for one in a different unit that would offer me more time to write, as well as some fellowship with the burgeoning artist community. When I told a friend I was leaving my job and unit so I could write more, he asked, “Write more? What, letters?”

I, and others, were starting to understand the decompression of creative energies that come after things we loved ended. My colleague C. Fausto Cabrera and I talked a lot about being responsible for ourselves as a community of artists to cultivate our work, so that when the next great opportunity arose, we’d be prepared. Because we agreed that it would come, and it mattered that we got it.

For a while C. Fausto and I were the cohort. Trying to convince others to buy into the community when there weren’t inspirational free people to motivate them was a hard sell. C. Fausto had a vision for a writing program facilitated by the long-term prisoners in the facility, allowing older inmates to mentor newer inmates. My own focus had always been on creating an environment that cultivated both communal events and shared personal accomplishments. While we dreamed, I was still finding ways to write my book without getting the project shut down before its completion. It was out of this climate, and from these meetings, that C. Fausto drew up his outline for the Stillwater Writers’ Collective and presented it as a potential program to our education director. She linked us to the then upstart MPWW, which offered us the outside resources to enable the sort of long-term program that C. Fausto envisioned and laid a platform for publication and awards most of us didn’t have before.

Not all writing groups and communities will evolve in the ways the SWC and the collectives throughout the Minnesota system have or even be fortunate enough to encounter an organization like the MPWW. But the same essential hows and whys exist in the need to organize in all carceral situations. We already organize in other ways— whether to commiserate over the food or the financial exploitation, or talk crazy about football (or each other). The forming of a writers’ collective is really just what we do already, with the greater intention of promoting each other’s work.

In this community, there were lessons we came to understand. One: things are cyclical. We had seen that opportunities did come, just not that often, and that they went away eventually and didn’t come back. But that allowed us to anticipate that something would come—we just had to be more proactive about what we needed that opportunity to do and be.

We also grew to understand the scarcity of resources. In community, there can be a pooling of those resources. We build collectives so that the mechanics of the writer’s life won’t get in the way of the writing (even though it still will). It’s not therapy, and it’s not magic either. It’s work. But it’s our work. We find fellowship with others who care about their work—or at least with others who believe that life is bigger than the labor these places expect from us, or the scraps they throw at us. There has to be space to communicate that on the page.

***

Some things to consider when starting your own prison writing communities:

You can make your own rules, but be fair with each other. There are enough rules in these places as is. There are rules of the facility and the system and the rules you live by with the people you are obligated to in here, and to the people out there. Everyone gets to set their own goals. Collectives are really about support and the cultivation of different kinds of thoughts. Ours was really an artists’ collective with most of the guys also being painters or some other kind of graphic artist.

You are building allies, not a gang. Not everyone has to be one of those friends you will name your children after. There might be mutual interests, similar goals, or an author you share an appreciation for—that should be enough.

Writing groups are also reading groups. Not only are workshops the time and space to share your writing, but they’re also a way to cross-pollinate the community with good books. The kinds of books, essays, poetry, that you share with each other will dictate the energy of the group. I have given a copy of Jimmy Santiago Baca’s “Coming into Language” to more people than I can count.

Even success might not change the minds or the rules of the system. Maybe you publish or win an award. Maybe a warden or an education director shows it off as an example of the kind of results they’re producing—so what? They probably won’t and it doesn’t matter. Make the work you are compelled to make. That’s what really does matter. Your writing might do more work than you think it will outside of the captivity business, even if you don’t see it up close.

Have communal projects. These can be anthologies or chapbooks. They can be the organization of a reading or event, if able. These are the communal movements you will remember later. The help one might get from a good workshop might get someone published, but the public adulation of a reading or the validation from seeing your words in print carry unbelievable power if you’ve never felt it before.

Here’s the other important note about prison writing communities: they aren’t collective hallelujahs. Typically, they are competitive and cliquey and composed of people fragmented and fractured by the experience of incarceration. Put simply: plenty of our cohort almost can’t stand each other. But together we clarify and contextualize each other. We offer peer support, and greater than that, we are an alliance.

A woman asked me sincerely a while back why I believe I thought I should be able to write and create despite the dark things I had done earlier in this lifetime. I considered her question for a second and told her, because if I don’t believe in myself and in my right to expression, who should? If I don’t fight to make the things that I create, that matter to me, then who will fight for me? We can ask the same of each other.

In these prisons, our value has always been in our backs rather than in our minds. It is necessary to join forces. When confronting barriers like walls and fences and all that shitty concrete a mile thick with archaic social norms and laws put forth out of fear—amplification makes a difference. Our voices become vibrations that can disrupt the impersonal representations of the value given to us on this earth. Our voices, our work, make us people again. If we don’t take care of each other, or cultivate each other’s talents, then who do we expect will?

Remix the Plan, Return to the Purpose

How to Center Participant Storytelling in Writing Workshops

Nicole Shawan Junior

The waiting room was cramped. Self-care bulletins, hotline advertisements, and glossy Department of Probation postings were taped on its green walls. In slanted cursive, a Post-it cautioned, Please note, NYC Dept of Probation POs work 7 days per week. Any Departmental representative may/can visit your home, employment, program, school, or family members’ home. Thanks. Wide-legged and cross-armed, a young man slumped into a seat beneath the warning. Across the room, another’s eyes were closed, his head hung low as he napped. Next to him, a young woman cupped her cheek with a palm, sculpted nails pressing into her hair. Just under a dozen storytellers sat in the waiting room of the New York City Department of Probation’s Bed-Stuy office. They were there to participate in the first session of a ten-week writing program that Probation hired me to facilitate. By the looks of it, no one gave a shit about who I was or what I had to say. The incentive worked. The storytellers were there because attending the class absolved them from reporting to their respective POs each week.

I began my work with justice-involved teenagers and adults not even a year after I was released from probation’s vice grip. I was a felon armed with graduate degrees in law and education, as well as experience as a fourth-grade teacher and law school adjunct professor. I submitted a writing workshop proposal with one goal—to bring literary art’s restorative and transformative powers to people who sat in the very seats I was just released from.

I hadn’t even signed the contract before I began to construct the curriculum. I mapped the ten weeks to perfection—lesson plans full of craft elements, invitations to map goals and motivations, a list of essays and other resources needed, and more. The syllabus was a proverbial mixtape of Black and Latinx essays, memoir chapters, and short stories. I looped authors such as Reginald Dwayne Betts, Jaquira Díaz, Mitchell Jackson, Sandra Cisneros, Patrice Gaines, and more throughout the document like a cassette tape. I couldn’t wait to get started, confident that my ten-week curriculum was dope as fuck.

I handed each storyteller a syllabus. “Today, we’re gonna learn about place,” I said, surveying the room. The woman with the gorgeous nails typed ferociously on her phone. The man who slept when I first walked in pulled his hat down to cover his eyes. I stuck to my script. “This is week one. If you look at the syllabus I handed out, you’ll notice—”

“Miss, how long this class gonna be?” one storyteller interrupted.

Moments later, another asked, “Yo, you a PO?”

Mouth dry and ego bruised, I stammered through the rest of the class, ending it fifteen minutes early. The storytellers signed the attendance log and raced out to their lives. I scooped discarded syllabi from the floor and closed the door behind me. For days, shame and doubt stuck to me like a catchy hook. I considered the lies I could tell Probation to relinquish me from the contract. Instead, I forced myself to return to my curriculum. As I looked through each week’s goals, a thought struck. Everything I’d done—the curriculum, the facilitation style, the script—failed to center the storytellers. My ego was the thing I had set up to serve.

It was time to get out of my bag and set the former professor aside. I remixed the curriculum to reflect storytelling in all its forms. I added oral, musical, and visual storytelling into the blend: Radha Blank, Jay-Z, Kehinde Wiley, Kendrick Lamar, and more. Inspiring my storytellers to engage their narratives became the primary focus. Teaching craft was still a goal, but one not nearly as important as hearing their stories.

The next session, I arrived early to the Post-it reminding me that the room wherein I was trying to do this restorative work was replete with structural oppression and trauma. Meeting storytellers in a probation office was far from ideal. It was a first-degree assault on my mission. I pushed the tables aside, organized the chairs into a circle in the middle of the floor, and connected my phone to a portable speaker. Once the Wi-Fi loaded, soft beats pulsed, and I burned sage to purify the air and energy. As storytellers arrived, I invited each one to sit in the circle. The circle ensured we’d be able to truly see and hear one another, despite the building and system that caged us.

“On a scale of one to ten,” I asked, “how are you feeling right now?” Set on getting everyone talking, I continued, “What’s one thing you enjoyed doing since the last time we were here? What’s a goal you have for the week?” I went first, modeling how I wanted the storytellers to begin each of our sessions moving forward. Everyone rated their emotional states according to the scale I set, talked about the things that brought joy the week prior, and disclosed upcoming goals. Most were excited to talk; others did so begrudgingly. The responses led to shared stories, even if brief. Oral storytelling was underway.

Soon I realized that checking in caused cell phones to be ignored, eyes to stay open, and bodies to sit upright. Checking in enabled me to assess the storytellers’ individual emotional states, which informed my decision about the kind of work we’d perform in the session, even if that meant deviating from my scripted lesson plan. Checking in also brought us closer to one another by helping develop rapport and manifesting trust among strangers. It reminded them that I was not a probation officer, did not work with law enforcement, and that we created the space together. I grabbed my cell phone and plugged “Where I’m From” into the search browser. As the song’s intro bumped, I gave each storyteller a handout containing the lyrics.

“Ahhh, come on, Mizz! We gotta read?” Rashid’s eyes rolled beneath his baseball cap.

“Calm down,” I urged. “This isn’t a syllabus. Just lyrics.” Then Jay spat, and the room fell silent. Together, the storytellers and I read along as Jay rhymed, our hometown hero, born and bred in the very neighborhood wherein we sat. In “Where I’m From,” Jay-Z invites the listener to journey with him through Marcy Projects, painting Bed-Stuy as place better than Monet did water lilies in a pond. When the track quieted, the conversation flowed.

I endeavored, yet again, to talk about place as a literary craft tool. Only this time, I didn’t approach it as a pedagogical moment, incorporating literary arts theory and practice. Instead, the storytellers and I identified the sounds, sights, tastes, smells, and feelings attributed to the places we loved in a familiar song. The track sparked the storytellers to share coming-of-age stories. Everyone spoke freely, jumping in when something sparked a memory, a connection. Twenty minutes later, maybe an hour, I asked, “How would you describe where you’re from to a stranger?” Excitement buzzed. They named landmarks, dished metaphors, called out adjectives.

Aware that our session was drawing to a close and giddy from all the interaction, I encouraged the storytellers to complete an exercise: “Write one story about the place you’re from.”

“Oh, I’ve got stories for days,” Ms. Gloria, an older woman, exclaimed.

“Ahhh come on! We gotta write?” Rashid complained.

“I can’t rhyme!” Tayshia shrieked, her colorful nails slicing the air.

“Yes, I’m asking you to write. Just for five minutes.” I begged. “It doesn’t have to be a full-out story or a song. It can be a list, a poem, a rhyme, or a paragraph. No one but you is gonna see it, unless you want to share.” The storytellers honed on their respective papers, and wrote.

“Anyone want to share?” I asked, expecting no one would be game.

A few hands shot up. Others, including Ms. Gloria, had far-off looks, as though too caught up in nostalgia to return to our space. Still others averted their eyes as if afraid. Each time one storyteller shared, though, another gained the courage to do the same.

“Miss, you coming back next week?” Rashid asked after our session was done.

“Yes, sir. Same time and place.”

“A’ight, I’ll see you then,” he said.

Over the following eight weeks, my pedagogy improved. Some sessions, I executed the planned lesson seamlessly. But often I had to make in-session pivots to provide the storytellers with what their curiosity, emotional states, and life circumstances needed. Some of those pivots led to our best moments together.

It’s been two years since my first session with Probation’s storytellers. Since then, I’ve taught the ten-week workshop eight times. Often, I still have to pivot. When told I could no longer burn sage because it created a fire risk, I cleansed the room by walking through it with lavender packets, healing crystals such as black tourmaline and amethyst, and my imagination—I spent time intentionally envisioning the space as one full of glowing sunlight, laughter, and hearty conversation. The week when Brooklyn rapper Pop Smoke was murdered in LA, I led storytellers through mindfulness exercises including breath work and tapping—we drew breaths deep into our guts and exhaled loudly while gently tapping our foreheads, noses, shoulders, chests and stomachs to relieve our bodies of the anger, anxiety, and grief held within. When two of the storytellers who were dating had a rupture during class, I changed the lesson completely—instead of discussing literary voice we talked about the challenges of being vulnerable in our romantic relationships.

When Covid hit, all kinds of pivots proved critical. I learned that these shifts didn’t mean I was an awful teacher who failed her students. Quite the opposite. They meant I was self-aware enough to understand that not one lesson would be learned or story told if I didn’t put my storytellers’ artistic and socioemotional needs before my own ego.

No Pen or Paper Required

The Art and Practice of Community Storytelling

Casey Donahue

I’ve been lucky enough to make a career of listening to stories and facilitating spaces for folks to craft and share stories from their lives. I got my start at the Moth, a nonprofit dedicated to true stories told live without notes. The Moth produces events all over the world that are recorded for broadcast on its award-winning radio show and podcast. It likely airs on your local NPR affiliate station. As manager of the Moth’s Community Program, my highest priority was to expand our Justice Project, which allowed us to partner with the New York City Department of Corrections as well as nonprofits like the Innocence Project, Just Leadership USA, and the Bronx Defenders to host storytelling workshops in communities directly impacted by incarceration. After a full year of negotiations, we were finally approved to host a series of workshops with young people housed on New York’s notorious jail complex, Rikers Island.

Once inside, we were immediately frustrated by the many obstacles of hosting programming inside a correctional facility—challenges that will be familiar to readers—the most troubling of which was articulated by one of our students. During our first session, he pointed out that we were asking him to commit to the most dangerous choice one could make on the inside: to be honest and vulnerable. The tension of our work was expressed perfectly through his concern. To use the powerful technology of storytelling in a way that heals and connects—rather than exploits and exposes—you must cultivate what the founder of StoryCorps, Dave Isay, calls a “supportive culture.”

Creating this kind of culture is tricky in any community. In spaces of incarceration, the stakes are exceptionally high. However, as another student put it, our workshop was the only space where he was encouraged to express himself on his own terms. He was grateful to have it. And so, we do our best to create it, despite the very real risk.

I’ve never liked the term safe space. I find it quite presumptuous to claim any space safe on behalf of anyone else—particularly a story-telling space. But here’s a term that I do like: brave space. I define a brave space as one that is designed to invite community members into a process of self-selecting, incremental risk-taking. It takes courage to share true things about ourselves and to listen to what others have to say. There are some tried-and-true practices for creating a storytelling circle that can operate as a brave space, and I’d like to share some of them here. These ideas, by the way, can easily translate to a writing circle. Just add a pen and paper to the mix!

How to Create a Brave Storytelling Space

Find a (relatively) private space where folks can sit in a circle. A circle is an inclusive, democratic shape: it allows each member of the group to see every other member, and it can easily stretch to invite more people in. At Rikers Island we were assigned a dayroom, which meant that TV and video games would flood the background. Our instructor team assembled chairs in a circle, giving the group a makeshift container. Since we knew others would be able to overhear us, we provided extra empty chairs to signal that folks were welcome to join us at any time. As it turned out, there was a hidden benefit in this initially frustrating setup. By the end of the first session, each chair was taken.

Begin by warming up. We do not ask folks to launch into a full story right away. This can be intimidating, and it also encourages those who like the spotlight to dominate the room. Instead, you’ll want to cultivate a group energy that flows toward equal exchange, toward sharing and listening. For example, I like to go around the circle and give each person a chance to answer a simple prompt in one or two sentences. Here’s a great example: “I’m a person who likes . . .” This prompt allows for a wide range of answers and encourages a short response. In contrast, here’s a not-so-good one: “Something you regret.” This prompt is too specific, too invasive, and would likely take many sentences to answer. Here are a few more good ones: “One fact about me . . .” “One person I admire is . . .” “My favorite season is . . . because ” The other great thing about warm-up exercises is that they provide a ritual that the group can return to at each gathering. Rituals help us transition into a new setting, settle in, and become present. Find warm-up rituals that help the group relax and maybe even laugh a little.

Cocreate guidelines for your group. There are some rules of engagement that are essential to this work. Confidentiality is a big one. So is active listening. Perhaps most importantly, we emphasize the storyteller’s power to decide what and how to share. Every experience can be shaped into countless stories. Only the teller knows what version is best to share that day. (They can change their mind tomorrow—that’s the fun of an oral artform!) Participants provide feedback, but this process doesn’t work unless everyone agrees that the teller is the ultimate authority on their story.

Discuss storytelling and provide an example before asking the group to share their own. You can research and discuss whatever structures and story elements you like—there are many. It doesn’t matter which elements you emphasize. The point is that you generate some shared language around this juicy question: How does storytelling work? Once you’ve discussed this question, you’ve got to consult a model to see how your answers hold up. You can dip into other chapters in this book for advice and guidance. Once you’ve discussed some concepts and analyzed an example together, you’ll be in a much better position to give each other valuable feedback because you’ve practiced discussing the craft rather than commenting on each other’s lives. Which brings me to the next point . . .

This is not therapy; it’s a craft. To borrow a phrase from Nadia Bolz-Weber, a great storyteller and the most irreverent Lutheran minister I’ve ever met, we tell stories from our scars, not our wounds. Telling a story from a wound—or, in other words, sharing a story about a traumatic experience that hasn’t been adequately processed—is like trying to make a ceramic bowl with burning-hot clay. It doesn’t work and it hurts. In fact, it can cause long-term injury. If someone in your cohort tells a story that causes emotional dysregulation, or if they dissociate and don’t remember what they said, it’s probably too hot. Another trap that folks fall into is misinterpreting the feedback process as license to comment on the storyteller’s life and choices. At best, this erroneous commentary sounds like you’re pumping up the storyteller: “I just think you were so brave to write that letter. You’re a role model!” At worst, it’s judgmental: “I’m confused why you thought that writing her a letter would do any good.” Either way, talking about someone’s life choices is not the same as honing a craft. Stick to the craft.

Tell multiple drafts of stories and time them. Workshopping, put very simply, is the process of telling one story out loud multiple times and receiving feedback. Whether we’re telling or listening, repetition sharpens our skills. For this workshopping process to work, however, the group must agree on a time limit. I suggest somewhere between three and eight minutes. Time limits help storytellers edit. They also ensure that everyone gets a chance to share. As for feedback, begin with what worked well. “I loved how you said ________ because ________ .” If you’re critiquing one another, remember that the storyteller is in the driver’s seat. Offer feedback as a craft-based question. For example: “What’s the theme of your story? If it’s brotherhood, I’d love to hear more about your relationship with your brother. If it’s coming-of-age, then maybe the part about your brother isn’t necessary.” Craft-based feedback is far more skillful and effective than opinion-based critique. (“The part about your brother was boring.”)

How to Generate Story Ideas

There are many great methods for generating story ideas, many of which can be found in this book. Here is another one: the story circle technique, developed by the Free Southern Theater and Junebug Productions. The facilitator shares a brief story, then nods to the person to their left, who can choose to share a story, starting with, “Your story reminds me of . . .” They can also choose to pass. The key to this technique is to not think about your own story beforehand. Instead you trust that, by listening to others, a story will emerge inside of you. You observe that emergence and trust what comes up.

How to Tell a Great Story

A well-crafted story often looks great on the page. In fact, some of my high school students transcribed the five-minute stories they crafted in our workshop to create their college application essays. Other workshop participants have used their stories as seeds for animated shorts, full-length plays, and memoirs. Here are some key ingredients:

Find the journey in the story. For a story to work, the storyteller must articulate a shift in perspective. It can be small, but it has to be there. If you’ve got a story idea but no journey—if you don’t think your outlook changed over the course of the story’s events—don’t give up hope. There are lots of ways to find a journey around which to shape your story. Ask yourself: Did I make a choice in this story? Did I discover something in this story?

If this concept sounds a bit tricky, consider this little anecdote. I crashed my car into a tree, then got out of the car, then ran to my friend’s house, then hid in the closet. Lot’s of action, right? But it isn’t a story unless I explain how this series of events impacted me. If I say that, sitting in the closet, I thought to myself, “Holy shit! I am just like my dad!” Now I’ve got a story! Feel the difference?

By the way, one experience can yield many stories. It all depends on which change or choice you shape the story around. One last trick: if you can articulate your journey in one sentence (“In this story, I go from thinking I’m a rebel to realizing I’m just like my dad”), then congratulations, you’ve got a story on your hands.

Establish the stakes of the story. Great stories don’t necessarily need to have the highest stakes. (“A comet was plummeting toward Earth and we were moments away from utter destruction!”) But great stories have clear stakes. In other words, it’s clear why this story matters to the storyteller. If we know why you care about this story, then we will care too. For example, let’s say I accidentally drop a red plastic ring in the gutter. Let’s say I’d purchased this ring at a carnival and don’t care much about it. Then you won’t either. Not the most riveting of tales. But if I tell you that the carnival was the last time I saw my nephew before he got sick, and that I wear this ring as a symbol of my faith that he’ll get better . . .

Include only the crucial details. Once you’ve articulated the journey and the stakes of your story, try telling it. The first few times, you’ll likely include all sorts of interesting details that don’t belong. That’s why we workshop. At this stage, look closely at each detail and ask yourself, does this detail enhance my journey? If not, leave it out.

Paint scenes using internal and external description. Great storytellers share what’s happening both inside and around them as the story progresses. Another trick for painting great scenes is speaking in the present tense. (“I run to the closet and sit on the pile of shoes. I’m thinking to myself: If I just stay here, all of this will go away. . . .”)

The use of dialogue is another good technique. (“My friend knocks on the door and is like, ‘Hey, you good in there?’ And I’m like, ‘Uh-huh.’”) One note on dialogue: don’t mimic other people’s accents, especially if they have a different way of speaking than you do. It rarely enhances and often offends.

One last trick: try starting directly in the action. “I’m driving down Liberty Avenue in my red Toyota Camry. It’s one of those fresh spring days in Michigan when the sun is very bright, and as I turn onto Freedom Street, a horrid glare hits my windshield.” As opposed to: “I’m from Michigan. I grew up there, just like my mother and all my uncles and aunts. And my cousin, actually, gave me this Toyota Camry that I loved. It was probably 1998 when he gave me the car. And then in 2006, I was driving down Liberty Avenue . . .” You don’t have to tell your whole life story for us to get it.

Tips for Performing Your Story

In every workshop, we conclude our work together by giving each teller a chance to get up and share their story with an invited audience. If you want to conclude your circle in a similar manner, here are some things to keep in mind.

Be nervous! The whole point of this artform is to share your authentic self. And it’s very common to feel nervous when you get up to share a story. I still feel nervous every single time. Nervousness indicates that this story matters to you, and it enhances the performance by adding some stakes. Embrace it. You can even just say it straight to your audience: “I’m nervous.”

Tell your story like you’re speaking to a friend. No need to put on any professional or dramatic airs. Pretend you’re sitting around the kitchen table, or on your stoop. That intimacy will encourage your listeners to lean in.

Launch right into your first line. Having a very strong opening line is the mark of masterful storytelling. Folks with less experience tend to preface their stories with introductions: “Thanks everyone for coming. My name is Casey, and I’m grateful you’re here today.” Don’t steal your own thunder! Dive right in, like you’re Edgar Allan Poe: “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary . . .”

It’s your truth—you can’t mess it up. Unlike written pieces, a spoken story is a living, breathing thing: it can change depending on who is listening or how you’re feeling that day. Sometimes, a story will seem to take on a mind of its own and decide it needs to be told differently this time. I love those moments, because they make me wonder about the stories we carry. Maybe our stories do have minds of their own. Maybe the stories we carry matter—not just because they’re ours, and they’re true, but because they are threads in a much larger tapestry. Maybe all our stories are connected in some way that we can’t quite see. I like to think so, anyway.

Translating to the Page

Doran Larson

“You really believe what you’re saying?”

This question cut off the ramblings of a thin young seminary student who’d been asked why he felt a vocation to join the clergy. He fell silent as a songbird hit by a rock.

I was new to the group and wasn’t sure just what was happening. The student had seemed sincere. But the room turned painfully still, despite the voices of COs yelling down the hall outside the door, undercut by the regular squawk from the PA system. There were about fifteen of us in the circle, a mix of men living inside Attica and volunteers from outside. The group started after the 1971 rebellion, in an attempt to give incarcerated men more contact with the community. The member of the community bearing the weight of our eyes started to speak, then wrapped his pale arms around himself, on the verge of tears. Raised in a profoundly Christian family, he said he’d never not felt a calling. It seemed he’d also never felt that calling challenged.

Within weeks of that day, my teaching schedule changed and conflicted with the group meetings. So I initiated a writing workshop, slotted to fit into my calendar. I wanted to come back inside because that moment of painful silence was just one instance of the laser-like observation and unyielding honesty—the readiness to call out bullshit—that I’d witnessed among the incarcerated men in that group.

Novelist Henry James famously noted that “a writer is someone on whom nothing is lost.” If that is true, then prison must be well-supplied with potential writers. The men in the workshop made clear that learning to read officers, other incarcerated people, and staff is necessary to survival. Inside an institution that presents a daily morality play of right and wrong, translating that skill to the page will result in essays, fiction, poetry, and plays that the world needs to read.

Over the course of ten years, the men in the group moved from wondering what they could write that anyone would care to read to publishing in some of the nation’s top literary journals and magazines. One, Danner Darcleight, authored a widely lauded prison exposé, aptly titled Concrete Carnival. These accomplishments were possible because, with time and patience, we formed a community that welcomed everything the members brought to their writing, and reading, with honest criticism and mutual support. The cardinal rule was that there would be no ranking. We read and discussed the writing of men struggling with composition basics as seriously and constructively as work already slated for print. “Does this feel true?” “Do we believe this character could be walking around on this planet?” These were the kinds of questions we asked, all of them versions of “Do you really believe what you’re saying?”—a question that every writer needs to ask themselves, often.

As director of the American Prison Writing Archive, the nation’s largest digital archive of nonfiction essays by people incarcerated in US prisons and jails, I have read hundreds of essays by writers whose key skill is the observation of what occurs when people are confined to spaces of willful deprivation. The ability to convey what happens to characters—real or imagined—confronting conditions they would never ask for is at the heart of every piece of important literature. The exercises offered here seek to get that response on paper.

Prompt 1: Imagine or recall a time when you or someone you witnessed handled a situation either very well or very badly. Write three versions of the opening sentence; make them each very different. Read each aloud, revise, and decide which version works best to introduce what you want to say. Complete the first paragraph, then outline the rest of the essay.

Prompt 2: In the voice of someone you know, narrate a scene in which the narrator is faced with a difficult decision (to take sides in a dispute, to end a relationship, to break a destructive habit, and so forth). If this is the voice of someone you admire, let something not so admirable show through the narration. If this is the voice of someone you do not admire, let something admirable show. Write until you feel comfortable in this voice. Then stop and take notes about what you want to achieve in this piece.

Prompt 3: Recall a situation in which you had to work with someone with a very different personality. In first person, narrate a scene (real or imagined) wherein these characters work together. Don’t push the contrast; let it emerge naturally. Let the characters—their peculiarities, desires, weaknesses, and strengths—drive your writing toward a conclusion.

Prompt 4: Recall an organized event you have witnessed—wedding, sport, carnival, rodeo, and so on. Write the scene in striking details (colors, sounds, and more). Try to re-create the mood of that event by writing out the characteristics of the participants, creating written “images” of them. Now, place yourself or an imagined character in this scene. Give this person a purpose: What do they want to see happen, or not happen? Is there some personal benefit they stand to gain depending on how this event unfolds? As you continue through a draft, watch the stakes for your character evolve as events unfold.

On Using Small Stories to Illuminate Big Issues

Lauren Kessler

A real writer is one who really writes. This may not be the first thing I said to the lifers who showed up that afternoon for the first meeting of our writers’ group inside Oregon State Penitentiary, but it was probably what I said the most often. It is the first line in a stanza of a Marge Piercy poem—about the pleasure and the toil of writing—which ends this way: “Work is its own cure. You have to / like it better than being loved.”

The men—at first three of them, then six, then eight—showed up twice a month to exercise one freedom they still could: expression. It was a challenge to find the time and space—both physical and psy-chological—to write. It was a challenge to cull experience, dissect feelings, scrutinize relationships, convert thoughts to words, and then revise and polish. But they did it. Because: Work is its own cure.

The writers ranged in age from thirty-eight to eighty. They worried that they didn’t know grammar, that their spelling was marginal. They worried that they didn’t have anything to say, or too much. They worried no one would want to listen. They worried they weren’t “real” writers.

They shouldn’t have worried—although I think the worrying made them better writers. The worrying led to a questioning attitude, an openness to feedback, a seriousness of purpose, a commitment to the craft. It led to a level of literary professionalism that stunned me—and so impressed PEN America that, during the first two years of the group, four of the writers won Prison Writing Contest nonfiction awards.

We talked a lot about issues: crime and punishment, incarceration, restorative justice, shame, forgiveness, isolation, connection. We agreed that people need to read about issues, but people want to read about people. They are attracted to vibrant characters who say and do interesting things. They are pulled into you-are-there scenes. They are fascinated with action. Can a writer do both? Can a writer speak to important issues while also telling a compelling story? Happily, yes.

The writers I work with write factual, “life inside” stories. My approach is to encourage the writers to tell a small story that illuminates the larger issue. The “small” story has characters, scenes, dialogue, action. It shows rather than tells. Let’s say the issue you wish people outside knew about is privacy—or rather, the lack of privacy. You could explain the issue, rant a little (or a lot) about it. Or you could grab the readers’ attention with a small story that illustrates lack of privacy: your habit of awaking at 2:00 a.m. for the “privilege” of being alone with your thoughts; the time when you got good or bad news and needed desperately to be alone with it but couldn’t be; or (to be graphic) sitting on the toilet in your cell, in full view. Here are some word prompts to get you started, with a few examples from members of the Oregon State Penitentiary writing group.

Word Prompts: Privacy / Dreams / Decisions

Example from Sterling Cunio:

As a heavenly chocolate peanut butter brownie dissolves in my mouth, I am half paying attention to the writing group’s leader. We are supposed to be writing a prompt—either about food or decisions—but instead of picking a topic I am staring at that last lemon bar in the box of treats Lauren brought us from Noisette Bakery in Eugene.

“The food prompt can be about nutrition—or the lack of it,” she says, as I lick at least 25 grams of sugary frosting off my fingers. Usually the food in prison is flavorless and minimal, so these treats are to be savored. “Or you can write about decisions,” she says. This stems from earlier discussions we’ve had in the group about how prison robs you of the power to make decisions and contributes to what’s called “learned helplessness” that is part of becoming “institutionalized.”

I think about the peanut butter brownie. I saved a few bites. I think about the decisions I get to make: legal actions, business plans, who gets to visit for Thanksgiving, who for Christmas. I am blessed to have a life with enough options to make meaningful decisions. Then I make two decisions: I decide to finish this prompt. I decide to eat that last bite of chocolate peanut butter brownie.

Word Prompts: Hunger / Cynicism / Anger / Work

Example from Wil Myhre:

Steve S. has eaten his radio.

There’s a guard outside my cell telling me to report to the mental health building. I’m a crisis worker. It’s a long walk early in the morning—cold, dark, wet, gray, silent. Half awake, I’m wondering: Why would anyone eat a radio? How much time, what degree of determination would it require? Every day is different for me, but this is very different, as different as the many mental health issues infecting this maximum security prison. It’s becoming a mental health facility with bars.

When I arrive at the cell, Steve is sitting on his bunk waiting for an ambulance. The guard is pissed. This means paperwork. Steve talks. He is angry, unable to explain anything. I avoid the obvious question. The ambulance arrives. A week later, Steve is back.

There’s a guard standing outside my cell telling me to report to the mental health building. Steve is sitting on his bunk waiting for an ambulance. He has ripped his stitches, sternum to pelvis, the surgery to remove the radio parts. His guts are on his lap. The guard is pissed. More paperwork. A week later, Steve is dead.

Word Prompts: A Good Surprise / Hope / Forgiveness /Determination / Power

Example: “What Keeps Me Sane?” from Michael Kaiser:

Untied shoelaces! Not mine but those of some guy named Betts, who as a kid spent way too much time in prison and wrote a book about it. Soon after arriving in prison, I read his book as part of a restorative justice class. The passage about how he would keep his boot laces untied in the dining hall as his own way of defiance, breaking the rules just to keep sane, stuck with me, I didn’t know why.

Two years later, I get it. If you do not keep a part of your “outside” self, and hold on to it with everything, prison will engulf you. Today I walk into the chow hall with my shoelaces flopping all over the floor. Sometimes actually untied, more times than not only metaphorically untied. To many it may seem foolish. It works for me. I never want to think of my cell as my home. I never want to be okay with no privacy. I never want to be okay with my mail being read by some stranger, before I get it. I will never let this place engulf me. My shoelaces will make sure of that.

Here’s a few more: Love / Control /Acceptance

A real writer is one who really writes.
Write.

Writing the Poem of the Moment

Ellen Bass

In 2012, when Ben Bloch, a psychologist working at Salinas Valley State Prison (SVSP), invited me to start a poetry workshop there, I welcomed the opportunity. I’d facilitated poetry workshops for over forty years, and for over a dozen I’d worked with survivors of child sexual abuse using writing as a healing tool. I felt confident in my teaching skills and comfortable relating to people who’d experienced trauma and needed to express intense feelings. But I was very concerned about choosing the right poem to start us off.

I decided upon “Sole Custody” by Joseph Millar from his book Overtime (Eastern Washington University Press, 2001). This poem takes place in a “moment” at the end of the day when the speaker comes home from work with a bag of fast food for his adolescent son and himself. The intimacy and tensions of their lives are delivered to us with vivid detail; clarity of feeling; smart, convincing dialogue; and a final metaphor of discovery. Armed with this poem, I was hopeful that we’d make a good beginning.

Usually in a workshop, I’ll read the poem I’ve selected and talk a little about it, pointing out various aspects of the craft. But in our first session, the men at SVSP were so eager that they started commenting on the poem before I could start. I was delighted by their enthusiasm and impressed by their insight into the elements of the poem. Two of the men had such strong opinions about their interpretation of a line in the poem that I had to intervene and establish that there is often more than one way to construe a poem, but I was thrilled to see this kind of excitement about syntax! In just a short time, real trust was built. Poetry gave us what poetry always offers. In the words of Galway Kinnell, “To me, poetry is somebody standing up, so to speak, and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment.”

Like Millar’s, one of the most basic and useful poetic structures is the poem that takes place entirely in one moment. The moment may last just a few seconds or some minutes, but the poem stays rooted in one time and place. This kind of poem has a natural dramatic tension. You’re immediately drawn into a story, albeit a short one. Also, any moment is interesting if you explore it deeply enough.

Take, for example, these other “poems of the moment”: In “If All My Relationships Fail and I Have No Children Do I Even Know What Love Is” by Patrick Rosal, the speaker is in a café, watching a fireman wrapping his young daughter’s arms with cloth in preparation for a boxing class. Rosal takes us slowly and deftly through this action, bringing us into the tenderness of the relationship in contrast to the dangers of the world. A great example of close observation and just enough reflection.

“Summer Solstice, New York City” by Sharon Olds begins with a man on the roof of a building with the intention of taking his life and takes us through the tense course of his rescue. Sharon Olds is a master at taking it slow and offering rich texture, detail, description, and simile. At the end she opens the poem up into a stunning, healing image: “back at the beginning of the world.”

So, how to choose what moment to write about? One way is to think of a relationship that is interesting to you. It might be with a family member, lover, friend, or anyone who has had an impact on your life. Write down five or ten moments from that relationship— whatever moments come to mind, even if they seem insignificant. After you make your list, pick one. Take a few minutes before you begin to write and see that moment in your mind. Are you inside? Outside? What’s around you? Can you tell what season it is? What time of day? Are there other people there? And what do you hear? Is there conversation? What are they saying? What are their voices like? Go through all the senses this way: Are there any smells? Is it hot or cold? Do you taste anything? Touch anything?

Take us slowly through the moment. Stretch it out through description, detail, and metaphor. You can include what you felt and thought, but be sure to ground those feelings and thoughts in specifics. Detail and description are the workhorses that will carry emotion in the poem.

Attention to Memory

Jennifer Bowen

One of the most insightful writers I’ve ever met, D, reads his personal essay to the class. “Every half-hour of every day of the past eleven years, an employee of the Department of Corrections has shined a light on me to make sure I was perpendicular and present. . . . How do human beings walk past one another 192,000 times without ever inquiring about their well being? They do it in eight-hour shifts.”

D pays exquisite attention to the way others pay attention. He calls himself “a state-raised kid.” Now in his midfifties, he entered the system around the age of twelve. His life story is inextricable from the system, and so, in some ways, is his art.

Across any of eight facilities throughout the state of Minnesota the scene can look similar: writers might lean in (or lean back) and listen to each other around the workshop table. It’s clear they’re aware of how weighted their feedback is, so they make careful suggestions and clarifications, minute real-time adjustments. It’s usually predictable, those who share and those who remain silent. A writer clears his throat on behalf of a shy classmate who hasn’t shared for weeks. C says to F, who has been inside for over fifteen years, “You should read your poem about kindergarten and that little girl who twisted her braids.”

And F does. We travel back to his life at the age of five. The writers offer feedback. That poem will go on to find a wide audience. It will be produced into a video that gets shared widely. Most importantly, it will illuminate a refugee boy’s memories of otherness, race, and his first friendship.

Creative writing classrooms in prison are a community, one filled with friends and makeshift family. As such, it is a room in which attention is paid to the attention that has been paid. Is there any more crucial tool for a writer? Is there any more complicated place to refine that tool than prison?

“How, though,” student Jeff Young asks in class, “are we to pay attention as a writer in a place where our survival demands we look away?”²⁷

There is no easy answer to that question, and what answers exist aren’t mine to give. There is the looking for the light. Listening to others’ language. Noting something off in a day’s routine. When the place you’re in is one you can’t or don’t wish to watch, writers can attend to memory. Willa Cather says, “Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.” Memory—with its flaws and fractures and people and places—is also fertile terrain for writers to explore.

I’m the artistic director of the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop (MPWW). Through high-quality creative writing classes, a one-to-one mail mentor program, and related programming, MPWW fosters literary community and a devotion to art inside of Minnesota’s state prisons. Many folks we work with were writers and organizers long before we came along.

The work that brings me the greatest joy, though, is teaching creative writing classes to writers who are incarcerated. I have done so for a decade. I’ve been honored to read about that broken streetlight near the school bus stop; a run from home and harm, into the forest; an IED blast in Iraq; Grandmother’s fry bread; waking up happy— light through the curtains—at the age of five. In other words, I’ve read many memories brought to life through reverent attention. Below are a few exercises that will focus attention in a way that will crack open the door of memory.

Prompt 1 (after Tim O’Brien): Revisit a person on the page by listing the things they carried. These can be items/ideas/emotions they “carried” in their glove compartment, their pockets, their purse, their prison bins, and so on. Here’s an example of what Paul VanDyke, a student in MPWW’s first creative writing workshop wrote. Paul describes Sergeant Mauer by listing what was in Mauer’s notebook:

Starting on the front page and working back, Maurer’s notebook looked a lot like any Infantry platoon sergeant’s: meeting notes from command, information on his soldiers, details of upcoming missions, concerns from his soldiers to pass up the chain. Rumor had it, there was also a platoon roster in order of who he would get rid of if he had to give up troops. I hear I was right where any good shammer should be—smack dab in the middle.

If you flipped the notebook over though, you would see another side of Maurer altogether. The back pages were written by the imaginative, cynical, creative, Mr. Hyde side of him. Starting on the last page and going forward, Maurer’s genius came out. A page was dedicated to ridiculous super-heroes and their powers. One was a hemophiliac with an unlimited supply of blood named Papercut.

Prompt 2 (with thanks to Robin Hemley): Describe the earliest kitchen you remember. Use all five senses. What did you see, smell, hear, taste, touch? Who was in that kitchen? What were they doing? Who left the kitchen and through what door? What sorts of things were said in that kitchen? Was there a peeling piece of wallpaper in one corner? Was there a warm greasy spot near the door where the dog liked to lie? Now, put at least two people in the kitchen. Let them speak to each other. Let their conversation tell a story inside that room, inside that memory. See, briefly, how Will Anderson’s kitchen memory led him to memories of a childhood pet, Rosie:

I crouch down and out of sight; lean against the overfilled, Rubbermaid garbage can to keep from falling over. This morning’s coffee filter slides from the refuse summit and avalanches coffee grounds into my hair and over my face. I try and spit the leavings without making any noise but the urgency of bitterness on my five-year-old tongue pushes thoughts of secrecy from my mind. Just as Rosie nosing around the corner at the promise of a garbage disturbance pushes balance from my body. The jingling of her tags and the hollow thudding of her happy tail against the plastic bin is quickly followed by the metallic clinks and clunks of recliner machinery collapsing into place underneath a roused and angry father..

Prompt 3: Tell the story of your life in smells. Choose five. It’s not important to follow the years, but instead follow the most significant smells that you recall. Below is a poem by Kennedy Gisege, from his chapbook The Liturgy of Smell. See the way smell leads him between memory and present day.

A Day in Prison

The hallway smells like thirty years before
scented with disinfectant
that formaldehyde of the living
which reminds me
of the day about to be discarded.
Those of us
who are lost to infamy
who sing alone
like the moon and the caged birds
to no one, understands loss
more than what came before.
And when we fall in love
it’s only in the night
and only to say goodbye to the day
a day we faintly remember
or years too late,
thirty years before.

27See Jeff’s contribution to the “On Journalism” chapter of this book.

The Inherent Magic of Objects

T Kira Mahealani Madden

As a writer and facilitator, I’m often trying to combat what I call “floating head syndrome”—that is, writing that never departs from the first-person narrator’s consciousness and speech. It is all too easy to forget about physicality, space, atmosphere, and movement when we write—particularly in enclosed spaces and facilities—so I often build exercises that allow the writing to time travel and reach out-of-body in order to find more surprising pathways through a story. One of the most effective ways I’ve found to navigate this in my workshops—in correctional facilities, recovery units, and reentry spaces—is the practice of identifying magical objects. Objects can serve as touchstones in a piece; they can carry their own histories, ancestries, languages, and metaphorical properties. They can engine a story the same way a character, voice, or plot can. We just have to listen.

As a child, I frequented strip mall magic shops and studied basic illusion magic. Decades later, these are still the terms through which I understand writing. Defamiliarization, for example: present a familiar object, then transform it for your audience until it feels new, foreign, unfamiliar. Imagine turning a coin into a foam bunny, or an apple into an orange. We have the power to pull off illusions in our writing, the ability to elicit surprise and awe. As a Native Hawaiian, I also grew up believing in ancient mythology, where any object felt enormous with magical possibility. I hope some of these object exploration exercises will help you access the transformative qualities in what we know, and perhaps transport you to the unknown, too.

Part 1: Think of an object that holds charge for you. It does not have to be the most important object in your life, but the idea or memory of it should fill you with a current of electricity or warmth. This can be an object from your past, one that belongs to you now, or an object you envision in your future. It can be real or imagined. Now close your eyes, and visualize every angle of it. Take a few breaths and connect to the feeling of the object. In your first freewrite, simply describe the object, physically. Consider sensory details. Different views of it. Feel free to draw a picture of it.

I’ll use a personal example for every step of the exercise: a small shard of yellow brick I found with my mother when I was a child. The brick reminds me of hope, of a bad day transformed into something bright and surprising with my mom when we discovered a new town together. For Part 1, I would describe the brick using words and phrases like the brick feels rough; it’s painted a bright, unnatural yellow, the same yellow as a traffic light; it looks and feels sharp, triangular; three inches; shattered; heavy; dusty; cracked; it fits in the palm of my hand; from under it, you can’t see the yellow paint at all, just the red brick.

Part 2: Challenge yourself to write the story of your object in a single sentence. How can you offer personality, history, mood, and significance to the object in such a short space? Maybe you write an introduction to the object. Or maybe it’s the object speaking. Do this as many times as you can for five to ten minutes. Try to push yourself for at least ten sentences. The sentences should feel as if they’re opening rather than slamming shut. They should seduce or intrigue. Example: The yellow brick never led us to Oz, but it brought us back to each other.

Part 3: Spend a few minutes coming up with ten to twenty associative words related to your object. Here’s the catch: try not to use any of the descriptive words you used in Part 1. Instead, take imaginative leaps. What does the object, or the memory associated with the object, remind you of? Allow your mind to travel. Consider sensory details. Any words you might hang on this object. Example: Dorothy, Wizard, Sunday, daisies, sandwich, wax paper, mother, overalls, ski slope, chimney smoke, glad, balloon, mystery.

Part 4: Make a list of places your object has never been, or never will be again. If you’ve had a stuffed animal for one year, for example, it has probably never been in your childhood bedroom. Choose places that also hold charge for you. Example: My brick has never been: back to the road from which I took it, in my father’s car, in my father’s hands, in my first bedroom, in the trash with our other belongings, in my stomach, in a big city.

Part 5: Here’s where it all comes together in the writing:

1.Choose your favorite sentence from Part 2. That sentence will now be the final sentence of this writing prompt. Your goal is to build up to it.

2.Your associative word list from Part 3 is now your word bank for the writing prompt. Try to use all of these words to generate new sentences. Every sentence should contain at least one of your associative words.

3.General prompt for the writing: Transport your object to one or more of the places it’s never been (from Part 4). What knowledge would it bring to that place? How would the object be regarded or treated in that place? Could it have protected you? Supported you? Offered you advice? Could it have carried the voice or wisdom of your present or future self with it?

Further Investigation:

•Where did your object hypothetically live before its time with you? After?

•Who or what could have made your object?

•What personality might your object have, if it could speak? What stories would it tell?

•Can you unpack any metaphors within your object? A rock, for example, history in its very composition. What meaning does your object carry?

•What shape is your object? Can you write something about your object using that shape? If your object is a shell, perhaps the shape is a spiral. Maybe the writing, then, spirals and repeats itself.

Apple Is for Identity and Other Prompts

Anderson Smith

Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it.

Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

In classrooms where I have taught creative writing and spoken-word poetry in New York State medium- and maximum-security prisons for the past five years, I often bring in quotes to start our sessions. I focus on the word transform in Freire’s quote, which makes me consider that an inward transformation precedes outward change. There-fore, one would have to exemplify the transformation that they wish for their surroundings. Freire would argue that transformation must, therefore, begin with the reflective self.

As for myself, I identify as a Black cisgender man. Working with adults in and out of prison has been personal for me. Not only was my father incarcerated in the late 1980s, ripping his presence from my life at five years old, but he was also deported back to Jamaica after serving an eighteen- to twenty-five-year sentence. I met my father for the first time in 2013, almost twenty-five years after his release. Moreover, many of my siblings on my father’s side chose a path of crime. Had it not been for my mother’s constant reminders of my importance and my responsibility to society, I too might have shared my relatives’ fate. These are the influences I draw from to create writing exercises.

After learning a bit about my journey, consider yourself, both individually and globally: What do others have to gain from your humanity?

Hold that question in mind as we begin with a quick breathing exercise to get you in the writing mood. Put your writing materials to the side and sit up nice and tall (you get more air in when you aren’t hunched over). Take three short breaths, in through the nose, and out through the mouth. Now inhale through your nose for five seconds, hold that breath for three seconds, and then exhale through your mouth, slowly, for seven seconds. Let’s do that three times.

Are we good? Great.

The following exercises are to get you to think metacognitively (thinking about your thinking). As you do so, allow yourself vulnerability so your identity can organically emerge.

Writing Prompt 1—Apple Is for Identity: Let’s begin by grabbing an apple or another piece of fruit. Look at its outer layer. Does it have dents? Is it smooth? Is it waxy? Is it the most perfect fruit that you have ever seen in your life? As we open the fruit to expose the flesh and core, what you see is what remains hidden from the surface. Engage in a freewrite, responding to the following questions:

•What identity do you think you have when someone first meets you?

•What identity do you have once people get to know you?

•What does it mean to be yourself?

•Tell a story of when you felt most like yourself.

Writing Prompt 2—Writing for Self-Empowerment: I believe that our designer luggage helps to shape how we exist in this world. By designer luggage I don’t mean Prada or Gucci—I mean our singular blend of age, race, religion, life experience and culture. Our “designer luggage” is what we bring to our writing and reading. It is what makes us unique. We all have a story to tell. Engage in a free write responding to the following questions:

•What is one small way that you’ve empowered yourself today?

•What did you learn about yourself this week?

•Where do you need healing?

•Write a “thank-you” letter to yourself.

Writing Prompt 3—Your Shoes: A simple detail such as footwear can open deeper memories. For example, a pair of sneakers made instant favorite after the basketball player scored a winning shot. Or shoes made meaningful when worn to a wedding ceremony . . . or to a divorce hearing. Think about the texture and appearance: tied a special way, never washed, odorous. Alternatively, shoes might simply do the job of preventing rocks, glass, and dirt getting under your toenails. What do your shoes say about you? Engage a freewrite, responding to one of the following questions:

•What was the first pair of shoes you’ve ever bought yourself?

•Think of your most favorite and least favorite memory.

•What shoes did you have on your feet at those times?

Now, let’s end just as we began with a quick breathing exercise. Put your writing materials to the side and sit up nice and tall. Take three short breaths, in through the nose, and out through the mouth. Now inhale through your nose for five seconds, hold that breath for three seconds, and then exhale through your mouth, slowly, for seven seconds. Let’s do that three times.

Are we good? Great!

Until next time, keep that pen moving....

Personifying Location

Johnny Kovatch

I recently made my way back to Compton Courthouse to serve as a character witness for a current student’s resentencing hearing. This courthouse was not unfamiliar to me. Early on in my facilitating at juvenile hall, I would frequent these grounds to sit in on hearings involving students who were minors being tried as adults. Had it really been eight years since the first time I entered this courthouse? Everything came rushing back to me. The nervousness in my stomach as the building’s twelve stories blocked out the rising sun. The silence filled with tension as I waited in line to enter. The hush inside the elevator that took me to the tenth floor, where I was met by a second set of metal detectors. The heavy anticipation inside this windowless department where the hearing was taking place. My racing heartbeat as court was called into session, palms sweating when asked to raise my right hand . . .

I thought about the importance of location. Walking into the courthouse was an education I would never be able to attain by simply reading a book or attending grad school. It offered a window into the childhood of these students, listening to personal details that some were still too guarded to write about. In turn, my character was revealed back to me. Would I panic? Or would I meet the tension with a sense of grace? I thought about where the courthouse was located, in the city of Compton. I imagined the landscape actually speaking to me, describing itself as if it were a tour guide. The city told me the rich history of the Compton Cowboys, how this horseback-riding group was formed in the late ’90s to serve as role models for inner-city youth; how in Manhattan Beach, less than a half hour away, a very different world existed.

Thinking about the city brought up a range of emotions, which I viewed as a traveling companion. The fear I felt was both a friend and a foe—a friend who revealed in me a deeper layer of resilience, and a foe for the uncertainty that surrounded my student’s hearing. By calling back to a specific location, the city and the emotions experienced, I could apply what I learned to uncharted territory, whether stepping into a new prison or courtroom for the first time. This experience allowed me to draw upon a sense of calm and center myself. I could apply it moving forward. My reflections on these experiences serve as the origin of these writing exercises.

Step 1: Pick a location that’s meaningful to you. For example, I have read about individuals describing a hill overlooking their city where they could get away from the stresses of everyday life, a neighbor’s garden where they felt safe, or under a blanket when they were a child. Take us to this place during a particular moment. What feelings surface when you reflect? What happened here? Does that location still exist?

Step 2: Focus on your hometown or city. Personify it using the first-person point of view. How would your hometown or city describe itself? I am filled with song pouring from windows in the summer.... My spirit is written on hands that harvested these fields. How would your city describe its history? Customs? How would it describe its evolution over time? Would your city say if part of it was stuck in the past? How would your city describe its values? Is it welcoming to others? What emotions would your city express?

Step 3: Focus on personifying a specific emotion. Write about an emotion as if it is someone in your life. Courage is what raised me. It was my mother AND father. A former student of mine said that hate evolved from being his best friend into his worst enemy to a stranger I no longer associate with. Write about the many faces and identities of this emotion. What are their characteristics? Exploring this theme, we can finally ask: What has it taught you?

A Letter to My Ancestors

Raquel Almazan

While rehearsing our final class presentation in a small prison trailer, one woman stated that “raising a child is like sculpting society one child at a time.” It was a line that resonated with us all. The youngest of my theater class participants was serving a life sentence, tried as an adult while still a child at age fourteen. The monologue she created for our performance centered on feeling complete, grown, and free of the burdens of her past. As she performed, an ensemble of women spoke in chorus: “Her stature stands in a shaded place / an angel girl with an empty face / her name is written on a polished rock / a broken heart that the world forgot.” The words, written by another troupe member, added a layer of communal care to her story, underscoring the women’s investment in each other, how each singular journey echoed the others. No one was alone.

Just months after performing the piece for fellow incarcerated women, case managers, arts facilitators, correctional officers, and prison officials, key members of that audience, along with the legal team that had been working on her behalf for several years, advocated for her release. They won. Just a year and a half later, she finally came home.

While this is a unique case indeed, it proved to me the depth of possibility, that the process of creating art and the active role of allowing others to bear witness and engage can begin to change the system. And that very power lies in the participants who lead and shape this new reality for themselves. As the creator and facilitator of arts programs, with a special focus on theater and writing, I’ve worked with thousands of youths and adults in private institutions, public schools, residences with organizations, university workshops, and prisons from New York City to South Florida to Bogotá, Colombia.

The following writing exercises have been used at several different facilities where I encountered women who were survivors of domestic violence. Being a survivor, I knew how challenging it would be to begin this conversation. Using the ancestor letter exercises below, we began to unearth the lineage of violence, opening a painful yet liberating dialogue on how generations of women have navigated traumas in their own ways. We couldn’t control the past, but we could break the cycles, celebrate our history, gather the good, and move into a future we defined, one that our ancestors would have wanted for us.

The writing prompts can be used by individuals for generative writing experiences, in group settings or as fodder for larger collaborative projects. Please note, these exercises can and should be adapted to address various experiences and to speak to the full spectrum of gender identity.

Writing to the Ancestors

Part 1—Asking the Ancestors

Begin by asking participants to close their eyes and imagine who their great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother/father was. Imagine the details of their appearance, their smell, and their environment. Lead them through this visualization, touching on all of the senses: sight, taste, touch, smell, sound. As participants freewrite, read the following questions as their pens move:

•Can you speak to them, this ancestor?

•Can you ask your ancestor questions and receive answers that you have wanted or needed to know?

•Can you make some connections between the current cultural and social traditions of your family to the past?

•How are your ancestors still present in your life, or have you made a conscious break in the lineage between you and your past?

Using the freewriting results as building blocks, invite participants to write full letters to their ancestors, asking questions, drawing the past and the present together, stating needs, wishes, and desires for healing, understanding, knowledge, or particular forms of strength.

Part 2—Listening to the Ancestors

As participants freewrite, read the following as their pens move:

•Close your eyes and imagine what your ancestor is saying to you.

•Notice how the vocals sound as the ancestor forms words.

•Are the answers you are receiving hard to hear or soothing?

•What does your ancestor see for you, or wish for you?

In your own time, begin a letter, addressed to you. From the perspective of your ancestor, write their response to your questions.

Possible Next Steps—Group Poems, Monologues, and Dialogue

From these letters, excerpts of the letters can be constructed to create a group poem. Words, phrases, and repetitions are used to create a loose poetic text that calls on the ancestors each participant summoned into the space. Alternatively, some of the letters can stay intact, to be used as monologues. Two letters can now create a dialogue, shaping a theatrical scene.

Imagining Worlds

From Page to Stage

Ashley Hamilton

“This is the only place where I can forget where I am.”

Those words, from a student in the very first prison theater class I ever taught, changed my life. In that moment, I understood that I was witnessing something truly important: art as a vehicle for possibility. I have now been cultivating artistic and educational experiences within the United States’ correctional system for a decade and have taught and created arts-based projects in over two dozen prisons in the US. I went on to cofound the University of Denver Prison Arts Initiative (DU PAI), where I now act as executive director. Through DU PAI I’ve gotten to collaborate on innovative projects, including the With(in) podcast; two prison theater tours (one to the public!); the Inside Report, our statewide prison newspaper; Sojourn, a daily arts journal; and more (you can find some of these offerings in the resources section of this book).

I love how blending theater and creative writing allows us, as artists, to imagine new worlds. In the playwriting exercise that follows, I will take you from idea generation to creation of setting and character to writing a monologue for a play or movie. I’ve facilitated this exercise, particularly useful in a group setting due to its condensed structure, in dozens of prisons and universities. May you bring into reality a world that only you can imagine. I can’t wait to visit.

Step 1—Theme and Idea Map

With this exercise, you will work toward creating a collage or a “map” of images or words or both that will inform the world you create. Using a paper and pen, or images if you have them (magazine or newspaper cutouts are great), we will begin to meditate on a theme. Allow the pull of an image or word to speak to you and assemble or draw them together on a page. Notice how your images and words want to be in relationship on the page. Which want to be big? Small? Written dark or light? What world is longing to emerge from you?

Step 2—Setting Creation

After completing your theme and idea map, soak it in. Your map is the entry point into this new world. In the theater we call time and place setting. What is the setting of your world? Does it exist today? In the 1960s? The 1800s? Or the future? Or maybe in a place with no time at all? Another universe perhaps? And where is this world? Does it exist on Earth? In South Carolina? Italy? Tanzania? Under the ocean? Mars? An invented galaxy? You get to choose.

Step 3—PROP

Now that we have a little bit more information on the circumstances of your world, let’s find out who lives in it. Using the following exercise, bring a person in your world—your first character—to life. Write down the following:

P (Person) =

R (Relationship) =

O (Objective) =

P (Place) =

You can start with the second P if that is easier (we already know the answer!). Then, circle back to the first P. Write a few sentences about who lives in this world, maybe their occupation, age, gender, hobbies, or quirks. Then R—one relationship your character has. Who do they come into contact with? This can be a family member, a friend, a colleague, a peer, or even a stranger. Then, O—what is one objective or goal that your person has? What is one thing they really, deeply want?

Step 4—Character Biography

Spend a bit more time bringing this person to life by writing their biography. Write down every trait and detail you can think of: name, gender, age, birthday, appearance, occupation, hobbies, family relationships, other important relationships, personality, talents, fears, secrets, dreams, conflicts. Remember, you are the only person who can bring this person to life.

Step 5—Writing a Monologue

Our final step (for now) is to hear your character’s voice by writing a monologue from their point of view. Based on your PROP and character biography, what is your character longing to say? Make sure that the content of your monologue has energy behind it—whatever your character is saying needs to be important to them! You don’t want to write dialogue (yet) where another character or person responds. For now, only your character is speaking. This is their stage. What do they need the world to know?

Want to Keep Going?

If you are inspired to keep going with this exercise, here are a few more options: You could write a character biography for another character or many more characters, creating a cast. You could begin to write dialogue for a scene (that is, where another character responds back and a conversation occurs) in relationship to your monologue, or write a separate scene altogether. You could thread many scenes together and write a play! You could do a reading of the monologue or the play with peers or classmates.

Workshop Solitaire

Using Questions to Strengthen a Story

J. D. Mathes

On March 16, 1985, militants kidnapped journalist Terry Anderson as he was leaving a tennis court. Anderson remained chained to a wall in an underground dungeon for the next six and a half years in the southern suburbs of Beirut. In his head he composed poems, memorized them, and recited them to another hostage named Tom. Tom gave feedback, and at night Terry would recompose what he calls his “prison poems.” That was a workshop.

I am an award-winning author of four books, a book critic, a screenwriter, and a librettist, but in the mid-1980s, I was incarcerated in federal prison on a firearms charge, so I understand how hard it is to get feedback on your work from behind the walls. Not Terry Anderson tough in my case, but tough enough, and I hope this helps you. The “workshop”—a place for writers to gather and share feedback on one another’s work—can be you and another person, a class with twenty-five people, and everything in between. No matter how many people are present, the essential qualities of a good workshop member are to be able to read like an honest book critic and to be a good listener who takes notes while people are talking (keep in mind you won’t be able to justify your work after it’s sent out).

Importantly, both the reader and critic need to understand it’s only about the text and not about the person. The good critic will evaluate the text’s strengths and weakness and offer suggestions on how to improve it, or to reinforce what is working as it is, regardless of personal taste. Everything is in service to the story, and there is always something to be said.

Never forget to be generous in giving and receiving criticism. In one case, the writer is sharing a creation that took a lot of effort and has emotional weight for them. In the other, the reader took the time to read and give feedback on the work (you do want to be a better writer, right?). Both demand respect.

A good book critic proceeds from questions, and this is also good for revisions, which can also be considered “self-workshop.” Below is the first section of a short story I wrote, annotated to demonstrate how I use questions to read through texts, whether my own or others’. It offers insight into the kind of questions one might ask regarding elements such as pacing or how backstory informs the present story, or how the conflict, crisis, and resolution work, or if the ending is unexpected yet satisfying. You can then apply these to longer works too: memoirs, novels, stage plays, or screenplays.

You’ll notice I chose not to use a prison story to escape the assumption that’s all you will write about. It’s not all I write about. Another reason is to put you in new territory, so you are looking at the text with a different set of eyes.

The beauty of proceeding from questions is you come up with your own answers as you read. You are not tied to “rules of writing” or other writers’ responses. As you read the story below, you’ll discover an inquisitive way to engage with a text, but you should never forget the primary question: Am I enjoying this?

Futurity [How does the title work? Can it mean more than one thing or act as a metaphor? Does it intrigue you?]

Harry hasn’t shaven for a week. [What point of view is the story told from? Is it effective for this story? Does it change? If so, is it effective dramatically?] He sits in front of a computer monitor at the dinner table. [What verb tense is being used? Does the tense choice work for the story?] His bright pink T-shirt reads “Volleyball Dad,” with a silhouette of a pony-tailed player jumping for the kill. He has an earbud in his right ear with the inline microphone. The left earbud is tucked into the collar of his T-shirt. There’s a white stain on his shirt where oatmeal slipped off the spoon [What’s the tone? What’s the atmosphere? What unique details create imagery? How are your senses engaged?] when he shoveled it into his mouth sometime between the horse races in Czechia and Ireland around sunrise his time. [Do we have a sense of the world where the story is set? Is it the normal world for the protagonist?]

He talks on the phone. [Are we in medias res? The term in medias res is Latin for “in the middle of the action.” Aristotle wrote that all stories should begin in the middle of the action, as close to the end as possible, no matter how long or how short.] “I hit the trifecta at Praha-Velká Chuchle this morning. I’m telling you, Bro, I’m catching the perfect wave today, all the way to the futurity at Del Mar. [What is the conflict? What makes this a day like no other? How is the protagonist’s normal life now changing?] I feel it in the static, man.”

Harry gets up and makes his way around the counter to the kitchen with his coffee cup. The apartment looks single-dad disheveled. Dishes in the sink from last night’s taco extravaganza as he called it, counters not wiped down, un-mopped floor, a cluttered carpet, opened and unopened mail piled on a counter, and stacks of loose DVDs and their cases around the television. Art supplies and kid art occupy one part of the table by the cereal bowls Harry’s twelve- and fourteen-year-old daughters had abandoned like a retreating army in a rush to get to school. [Is there a sense of mystery as to the protagonist’s present condition or is the author being ambiguous?]

“Don’t give me bad juju with that luck talk. [Can you tell what the protagonist wants in the physical world? Can you tell what the protagonist wants emotionally—sometimes this is revealed slowly but is present like flame under a pot of water—and is it effective dramatically?] This ain’t roulette, Bro.” [How does dialogue characterize characters? How does it propel the drama? Does it create a sense of the story’s world? Is it important to the story? Is it expository and unneeded? Is it in dialect, and if so, is it realistic and honest or caricatured and condescending?]

His shoulders droop a little at the sight of a school flier on the fridge announcing money needed so his youngest can go on a field trip. [Can you tell what’s at risk for the protagonist?]

After pouring another cup of coffee, he makes his way back and nearly knocks over an easel holding a canvas painted with a surreally colorful horse—clearly done by a high school girl with some talent and a cotton candy imagination. Tucked into a blanket on the couch, a purple teddy bear splotched with pink hearts [Do you have a sense of who characters are through objects?] appears to be sleeping off a hard night of fighting monsters. [Does there continue to be vivid and unique imagery of the world and the people who inhabit it?] Harry often jokes to his family he’ll never get father of the year, but at least he cooks for his kids. [Is back-story organic to a scene? Is it expository? Is it half scene? Is it a full flashback that takes the reader out of the present story? Is it important to help understand the present story and propel the narrative?]

“Tracks in the PST aren’t open yet, but I got money on horses in Ireland and the first races in New York.”

Harry sets his coffee cup between his mouse pad and a breakfast plate with toast crumbs and dried egg yolk, and a crusty bowl with the remnants of oats hanging on like the seeds they once were. [Is the setting important to the story, or can it be set anywhere? Do added details continue to characterize, give texture, create a sense of place, and propel the drama?]

A second call rings. He looks at it and is torn about answering it. [Does the world keep impinging upon the protagonist?] “Mike, I got to get back to you. Yeah. Bye.”

Harry disconnects and answers but before he can say anything the person on the other end is talking . . .

“Yes, Ma, I fed Liz and Paula a good breakfast before school—”

He stops as his mother cuts him off. He madly scrolls the mouse wheel and clicks as he listens.

“Liz is feeling stronger. [Is there a sense the protagonist must not fail, but the possibility is there, even if they can’t see it?] I’m trying, Ma. Back in your day, things were different. Just one of her prescriptions costs more than rent.” He scrolls and clicks, clicks and scrolls.

“Yes, Ma. Live healthy in a car or sick in a house. Hell of a choice.” He reads the screen. “Rain in Lexington today, so wet track.” [Are the stakes being raised for the protagonist to create tension?] He scrolls and clicks.

“Nothing, Ma. I was just talking to myself. We’re not getting rai— No I’m not drinking. It’s eight in the morning, Ma. I’m fine.” [Is there a sense of the protagonist’s fatal flaw? Is there subtext in the dialogue? Like when an angry lover says fine, but is not fine?]

As you can see from the first couple of pages of this story, you can ask a lot of questions to help your fellow writers. Keep in mind Aristotle wrote that a story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. This coincides with conflict, crisis, and resolution. When you come to the end of any story, the last question about craft is, Does the story feel unified? It’s how you will know if all the elements are working together.

Epilogue

A Writing Life in Community—from Inside Out

Randall Horton

The flashpoint event that forced a different kind of community upon me, one not involved in riding twin-engine Cessnas or slicing through the Caribbean in cigarette boats toward Hatchet Bay, occurred in a program at Montgomery County Detention Center in Rockville, Maryland. Each night before we met, I would sit in cell 17, putting pen to legal pad, working out questions posed by Pat Parker, the social worker in charge of the group. The questions demanded I excavate traumatic events from my past in terms of the harm I had caused others and myself. Regurgitating memory to the page, and then to listening ears, told me one thing: I had the ability to connect with people, and myself, through the written word.

Before going upstate, Pat Parker made me promise I would never stop writing. No one had ever demanded a promise like that from me. I do not know what Pat saw in me, but I held on to that promise while riding the Blue Bird bus upstate. Sebastian, Big Pun, Milkman, and Hell Naw, cats doing way more time than I could ever imagine, became my second writing community, the strict critiquers of my novel in progress. The protagonist was a thirteen-year-old girl and a poet. The novel failed miserably. But from that failure emerged a love for poetry, and one nonfiction chapter that would find its way into my fourth book, Hook: A Memoir, years later.

No matter how many nights I sat up late inside cell 23 as “{#289-128}: Property of the State”—later, {#289–128} became the title of my fifth book—the idea of a writing life seemed more mythological than the American Dream. Looking back, when Milkman and Black would roll the ice cart around C-Tier after 10:00 p.m. lock, stop by my cell, and talk about my writing—those were my first workshops. No part of my story went uncritiqued in the five minutes we had to talk before lights-out. In those conversations, fiction was the closest to reality as we would ever get. We were trying to think outside of the box we found ourselves in.

After being abruptly shipped back to Montgomery County for my sentence modification hearing, I was placed in the same unit where I first began to write. All the faces had changed, of course, but I found comfort sharing with those who had been through the same battles I had. I knew I wanted to be a poet after watching Patricia Smith perform the poem “Skinhead” on a VHS tape brought in by one of the social workers. Smith, a Black woman, began her poem embodying a white Nazi with the line “They call me skinhead, and I got my own beauty.” I was fascinated that one could both be a poet and command a physical presence that sought to change the world. I wanted to change, and I understood change to be a never-ending process, but now I began to ask a new question: Can I have a writing life too?

A modification of that sentence allowed me to enter a two-year residential program in Durham, North Carolina. Every night in a gymnasium converted to a thirty-day intake center for the program, I would recite poems, trying to figure out how Patricia not only captured emotion but also how and why it meant something in the larger world. A year in, I was offered certain liberties, and one was being escorted to an open mic in Hillsborough, North Carolina. I read my first poem at a venue called Vague Metaphors. The poets that stepped to the mic were embraced and embracing in a way street life never was. I felt welcomed, rather than self-conscious. I was sent back to Washington, DC, with a new sense of who I was, a self that I began to recognize as the true representation of who I am.

When I returned to DC, in between trying to find a job, I found my way to the slam venue Teaism. In 2002, I read my first poem, totally free from the state in a room full of people who had no idea I had been to prison. Each time I showed up, I stayed to myself, sat in the back, read a poem, and listened to others read their work. One night a poet named Alan King came up to talk about the poems I had been reading. That one exchange led to being introduced to a nexus of writers who, by mere association, pointed me toward the path I did not yet know I was on.

All of the poets came to find out I had been to prison; and yet, no one judged me for the past that had caused so much wreckage, choosing instead to focus on the foundation I could build upon. There was Truth Thomas, who would receive the NAACP Image Award in poetry in 2013 for his collection Speak Water; Melanie Henderson, who would win the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award in 2013 for Elegies for New York Avenue; Alan King, who would publish Drift; and Derrick Weston Brown, who would publish Wisdom Teeth. There was Patricia Biela, who took me to see the literary giant Wanda Coleman at the Folger Theatre when I had no clue who she was, and Fred Joiner, who told me about Cave Canem—an organization specifically for Black poets. None of these writers had books or publications, nor had they received awards or fellowships, when I met them. We were all trying to figure it out together.

Beyond craft, these writers taught me valuable lessons about humanity and how to be a world citizen. On the eve of Thanksgiving in 2003, Truth took me to a park on K Street not far from a church I frequented when I was homeless for two years in DC. Here I encountered men whose position I once occupied on the park benches. I knew the grime residing under the fingernails, the grumble and growl in their stomachs, the vacant eyes. I had waited for the same wagon to bring a meal on a day my stomach was talking to my backbone. Now I was handing out blankets. That night Truth held a mirror to my face to let me know that change is, indeed, possible.

In 2004 these writers took me to Furious Flower at James Madison University, the first major conference on African American poetry since the 1970s. I met the likes of Black poetry icons Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Lucille Clifton, and Haki Madhubuti. I was literally talking to the architects of the Black Arts Movement. I was new to this thing called poetry, and they answered my fumbling questions generously. Although I felt out of place, like an observer, the writers assured me that I belonged. No one cared that I was the ex-convict or that I had been to prison; they were more interested in who I was reading. And after listening to Haki Madhubuti talk about the MFA program at Chicago State University—the only one in the country with a focus on the Black experience—I knew I was going to go, no matter if I didn’t know how. When I enrolled a year later, after graduating from the University of the District of Columbia, the MFA program found some money for me after learning what I had gone through to get there.

I did not actively seek a “writing life” more than I sought out community. I became connected to a way of existing as the returning citizen, as a writer—as a human. I was not some great miscarriage of justice coming out of prison. I ran analogous to and with the night and all it encompassed. Mine was not a cause to make it easier to be accepted, let alone forgiven. If I could not have been my full self, in all my complicated experiences, a writing life would still be, perhaps, an unattainable dream. I ran face-first and afraid toward a community, and in return, they told me where to go for the workshops, where to submit work, and where to find employment opportunities (in all fields), community service, retreats, reading series, educational opportunities, grants, and fellowships, including the National Endowment of the Arts Literature Fellowship, which I received in 2013.

And now Sebastian, Big Pun, Milkman, and Hell Naw must be out of prison—though I do not know their full or real names, or where they are. If I could, I would tell them thank you. The same thank you that I tell Pat Parker when we have our yearly talk by phone. I’d tell them what I’ve learned through them, and many others after: there isn’t one single way to a writing life, only your own.

Further Reading

On the Craft of Writing

A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver

Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays by David Ball

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

Changing My Mind by Zadie Smith

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee

Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels by Scott McCloud

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

Poetry As Survival by Gregory Orr

Save The Cat!: The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need by Blake Snyder

Storycraft: The Complete Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction by Jack Hart

Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor by Lynda Barry

The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr

The Craft: A Guide to Making Poetry Happen in the 21st Century edited by Rishi Dastidar

The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White

The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative by Vivian Gornick

This Year You Write Your Novel by Walter Mosley

On Building Writing Community

Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping by Matthew Salesses

Gathering Voices: Creating a Community-Based Poetry Workshop by Marty McConnell

How to Edit an Anthology by Angela G. Gentile

Stage a Poetry Slam: Creating Performance Poetry Events—Insider Tips, Backstage Advice, and Lots of Examples (A Poetry Speaks Experience) by Marc Smith and Joe Kraynak

The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom by Felicia Rose Chavez

The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker

Further Resources

Publication Venues for Incarcerated Writers

Contact the organization or visit their website for complete submission information.

ABO Comix is a collective that publishes comics, zines, and art created by LGBTQ people behind bars. abocomix.com | abocomix@gmail.com | PO Box 11584, Oakland, CA 94611

All Rise is a social justice online and print publication developed, written, and curated by currently and formerly imprisoned people. www.allrisemedia.org | hello@allrisemedia.org

The American Prison Writing Archive is an open-source archive for those living and working behind bars to document their experience. apw.dhinitiative.org | dlarson@hamilton.edu | Doran Larson, Hamilton College, 198 College Hill Rd., Clinton, NY 13323

Authors Inside is a nonprofit organization committed to publishing all genres that aim to make sustainable change through narrative writing. authorsinside.org | info@authorsinside.org | PO Box 293, Oceano, CA 93475

The Beat Within is a biweekly publication of writing and art from behind bars that aims to support incarcerated youth. the-beatwithin.org | PO Box 34310, San Francisco, CA 94134

Between the Bars is a weblog platform for people in prison. betweenthebars.org | info@betweenthebars.org

Beyond the Block is an online publication of short-form creative writing from incarcerated people. medium.com/beyond-the-block | writebeyondtheblock@gmail.com | PO Box 16662, Philadelphia, PA 19139

Black & Pink has a nationwide pen pal program for incarcerated members and a newsletter distributed free of charge to incarcerated LGBTQIA2S+ members and those living with HIV/AIDS. blackandpink.org | admin@blackandpink.org | 2406 Fowler Ave., Suite 316, Omaha, NE 68111

Columbia Journal’s Incarcerated Writers Initiative opens the student publishing platform to writers in prisons across the United States. columbiajournal.org/iwi | Incarcerated Writers Initiative, Columbia Artists/Teachers, 415 Dodge Hall, Mail Code 1804, 2960 Broadway, New York, NY 10027

Emancipated Stories collects writing and art by justice-involved individuals with the purpose of bridging those inside prison and those outside. quiara.com/emancipatedstories | emancipated-stories@gmail.com | Quiara Hudes, PO Box 569, New York, NY 10040

Evening Street Press publishes the DIY Prison Project, with the idea of showcasing the work of incarcerated writers. eveningstreet-press.com/diy-prison-project | editor@eveningstreetpress.com | 2881 Wright St., Sacramento, CA 95821

Free Time: Building Community for Incarcerated Writers, organized through the University of Arizona Poetry Center, pairs incarcerated writers with an outside mentor and coordinates an annual cash prize poetry and prose contest open only to Free Time writers. heyjoewatson@arizona.edu | Free Time, PO Box 210150, 1508 E. Helen St., Tucson, AZ 85721

Incarcerated Writers Project at phoebe was started by the editors at phoebe, an online journal, as a way to open the publishing platform to writers in prison. phoebejournal.com/iwp/ | phoebeliter-ature@gmail.com | Incarcerated Writers Project, Phoebe Journal, George Mason University, The Hub, Suite 1201, MSC5, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax, VA 22030

The Inside Report is written by and for the people who live and work within the Colorado DOC. https://www.insidereport-news.com/issues | DU Prison Arts Initiative, 2135 E. Wesley Ave., Suite 304 Denver, CO 80210

The Insider Prize, annually hosted by the magazine American Short Fiction, recognizes excellent work by incarcerated writers in Texas. americanshortfiction.org/submityourwork/the-insider-prize | editors@americanshortfiction.org | PO Box 4828, Austin, TX 78765

Iron City Magazine is an online and print journal devoted to writing and art from the prison world. ironcitymagazine.org | ironcitymagazine@gmail.com | PO Box 370, Tempe, AZ 85280

John Jay College’s J Journal seeks fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that examines questions of justice. www.jjournal.org | Editors, J Journal, Department of English, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 524 West 59th St., 7th Floor, New York, NY 10019

Journal of Prisoners on Prisons (JPP) is a prisoner-written, academically oriented, and peer-reviewed nonprofit journal. jpp.org | jpp@uottawa.ca | Journal of Prisoners on Prisons, Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1N 6N5

The Journal of Women and Criminal Justice features art and writing from justice-involved persons and advocates. Through a combination of personal testimonies and research, the journal highlights issues related to women and incarceration. women. reentry@gmail.com | New Jersey Reentry Corporation, ATTN: The Journal of Women and Criminal Justice, 591 Summit Ave., Suite 605B, Jersey City, NJ 07306

The Justice Arts Coalition is a nationwide collective of people committed to increasing opportunities for creative expression in carceral settings and shaping public dialogue around arts and justice. thejusticeartscoalition.org | info@thejusticeartscoalition.org | PO Box 8261 Silver Spring, MD 20907

The Marshall Project’s “Life Inside” is a series of first-person essays from people who live or work in the criminal justice system. themarshallproject.org/tag/life-inside | lifeinside@themarshallproject.org | 156 West 56th St., Suite 701, New York, NY 10019

Michigan Review of Prisoner Creative Writing: The Prison Creative Arts Project at the University of Michigan’s journal showcases the talent and diversity of Michigan’s incarcerated writers. lsa.umich.edu/pcap/programs/literary-review | PCAP at Residential College, 1801 East Quadrangle, 701 E. University Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48109–1245 Minutes Before Six welcomes original entries from new incarcerated writers. minutesbeforesix.blogspot.com | dina@minutesbeforesix.com | 2784 Homestead Rd. #301, Santa Clara, CA 95051

News Inside is the Marshall Project’s award-winning print publication for people inside. https://www.themarshallproject.org/tag/news-inside | newsinside@themarshallproject.org | Lawrence Bartley, The Marshall Project, 156 W. 56th St., Suite 701, New York, NY 10019

PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship commissions writers to create written works that illuminate issues related to mass incarceration and catalyze public debate. pen.org/writing-justice | prisonwriting@pen.org | 588 Broadway, Suite 303, New York, NY 10012

PEN Prison Writing Contest: The annual contest, decades running, accepts entries in poetry, fiction, drama, nonfiction, and memoir. pen.org/prison-writing | prisonwriting@pen.org | 588 Broadway, Suite 303, New York, NY 10012

Prison Journalism Project’s mission is to help incarcerated writers and those in communities affected by incarceration tell stories about their world using the tools of journalism. prisonjournalismproject.org | submissions@prisonjournalismproject.org | 2093 Philadelphia Pike #1054, Claymont, DE 19703

Prison Writers: Founded by journalists from USA Today and CBS News in 2015, Prison Writers is devoted exclusively to publishing stories written by incarcerated people. prisonwriters.com | prisonwriters@gmail.com | PO Box 334, New York, NY 10002

Prisoner Express creates opportunities for incarcerated people to get information, education, and a public forum for creative self-expression. prisonerexpress.org | CTA/Durland Alternatives Library, Prisoner Express, PO Box 6556, Ithaca, NY 14851

Prisons Foundation publishes scanned digital files of work, as submitted (including full books), of incarcerated writers on its website. prisonsfoundation.org | staff@prisonsfoundation.org | 2512 Virginia Ave. NW #58043, Washington, DC 20037

Resentencing Journal, a project of Tufts University Prison Initiative of Tisch College, publishes the work of writers and visual artists impacted by incarceration to represent and reimagine the experience of imprisonment and freedom in the US from a personal point of view. sites.tufts.edu/tupit/resentencing-journal | resentencing@tufts.edu | 163 Packard Ave., Barnum Hall, Medford, MA 02155

Sinister Wisdom is a multicultural lesbian literary and art journal interested in work that reflects the diversity of the lesbian experience. sinisterwisdom.org | 2333 McIntosh Rd., Dover, FL 33527

Sojourn: A Daily Arts Journal is a daily prompted arts journal from the University of Denver’s Prison Arts Initiative. To download a free copy, please visit https://liberalarts.du.edu/prison-arts/our-work/luxlit-press.

Solitary Watch welcomes written submissions by those currently or formerly serving time in solitary. They also offer a free quarterly newsletter to individuals behind bars. solitarywatch.org | info@solitarywatch.com | PO Box 11374, Washington, DC 20008

The Sun Magazine publishes personal essays, short stories, and poems. Though not exclusively for incarcerated writers, this magazine often includes their work. thesunmagazine.org | 107 N. Roberson St., Chapel Hill, NC 27516

Tacenda Literary Magazine: An Arts and Social Justice Journal is an online publication from BleakHouse Publishing dedicated to creative writing on crime and punishment. bleakhousepublishing.org | bleakhousepublishing@gmail.com | Professor Robert Johnson, BleakHouse Publishing, Dept. of Justice, Law, and Criminology, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20016 Underground Writing’s re/vision program is a one-on-one creative writing apprenticeship program, conducted through the mail, for those who are currently incarcerated.undergroundwriting.org | info@undergroundwriting.org | PO Box 1043, Mount Vernon, WA 98273

University of Southern California Dornsife Prison Education Project, an organization dedicated to creating pathways from incarceration to college, holds several annual essay contests for systems-impacted writers. dornsife.usc.edu/pep | uscpepwriting@gmail.com | 940 W. Jefferson Blvd., JEF 210A, Los Angeles, CA 90089

Words of Fire is an anthology of art, short stories, essays, and poetry by incarcerated writers. prisonbooks.info | prisonbooks@gmail.com | PO Box 625, Carrboro, NC 27510

Free Books and Journals for Incarcerated Readers

Send requests for titles or subjects to the mailing address provided.

Books through Bars (PA, NY, NJ, DE, MD, WV, VA) booksthroughbars.org | info@booksthroughbars.org | 4722 Baltimore Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19143

Books to Prisoners (all states) bookstoprisoners.net | Books to Prisoners, c/o Left Bank Books, 92 Pike St., Box A, Seattle, WA 98101

Chicago Books to Women in Prison (state prisons in AZ, CA, FL, IL, IN, KY, MS, OH; all federal facilities) chicagobwp.org | chicagobwp@gmail.com | Chicago Books to Women in Prison, c/o RFUMC, 4511 N. Hermitage Ave., Chicago, IL 60640

DC Books to Prison (all states) dcbookstoprisoners.org | btopdc@gmail.com | PO Box 34190, Washington, DC 20043–4190

Inside Books Project (TX) insidebooksproject.org | insidebooksproject@gmail.com | PO Box 301029, Austin, TX 78703

LGBT Books to Prisoners (all states except TX) lgbtbookstoprisoners.org | lgbtbookstoprisoners@gmail.com | LGBT Books to Prisoners, c/o Social Justice Center Incubator, 1202 Williamson St., Suite 1, Madison, WI 53703

Louisville Books to Prisoners (KY, VA) louisvillebookstoprisoners.org | louisvillebtp@gmail.com | Louisville Books to Prisoners Project, c/o McQuixote Books and Coffee, 1512 Portland Ave. #1, Louisville, KY 40203

Midwest Books to Prisoners (IL, IN, IA, KS, MI, MN, MO, NE, OH, ND, SD, WI) midwestbookstoprisoners.org | midwestb2p@gmail.com | 1321 N. Milwaukee Ave., PMB #460, Chicago, IL 60622

Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project (AR, IA, IN, KS, MN, MO, ND, NE, OK, SD) pagestoprisoners.org | mwpp@pagestoprisoners.org | PO Box 1324, Bloomington, IN 47402

NC Women’s Prison Book Project (NC) ncwomensprisonbookproject.wordpress.com | ncwomensprisonbooks@gmail.com

NYC Books through Bars (all states except AL, FL, LA, MA, MI, MS, NC, PA, OH, WI, with a NY priority) specializes in political and history books. booksthroughbarsnyc.org | info@booksthroughbarsnyc.org | NYC Books Through Bars, c/o Bluestockings Bookstore, 116 Suffolk St., New York, NY 10002

Open Books & the Prison Book Project (FL) openbookspcola.org | openbookspcola@riseup.net | 1040 N. Guillemard St., Pensacola, FL 32501

Prison Book Program (all states except CA, TX, IL, MI, NV, or state prisons in MD) prisonbookprogram.org | info@prisonbookprogram.org | Prison Book Program, c/o Lucy Parsons Bookstore, 1306 Hancock St., Suite 100, Quincy, MA 02169

Prison Books Collective Publishing and Distribution (AL, NC) prisonbooks.info | prisonbooks@gmail.com | PO Box 625, Carrboro, NC 27510

Prison Library Project (all states) prioritizes educational and self-help literature. claremontforum.org/prison-library-project | claremontforum@gmail.com | 586 W. 1st St., Claremont, CA 91711

Prisoners Literature Project (all states) prisonlit.org | Prisoners Literature Project, c/o Bound Together Books, 1369 Haight St., San Francisco, CA 94117

Read between the Bars (AZ) readbetweenthebars.com | readbetweenthebars@gmail.com | Read Between the Bars, c/o Daily Planet Publishing, PO Box 44014, Tucson, AZ 85733

Rogue Liberation Library (state prisons in OR, CA, ID, TX, NV; most federal prisons) peacehouse.net/RLL | rogueliberationlibrary@gmail.com | PO Box 3418, Ashland, OR 97520

Urbana-Champaign Books to Prisoners (IL) books2prisoners.org | UC Books to Prisoners, PO Box 515, Urbana, IL 61803

Wisconsin Books to Prisoners Project (WI) wisconsinbooksto-prisoners.org | wisconsinbookstoprisoners@gmail.com | 1202 Williamson St. #1, Madison, WI 53703

Women’s Prison Book Project (all states) wpbp.org | womensprisonbookproject@gmail.com | Women’s Prison Book Project, c/o Boneshaker Books, 2002 23rd Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN 55404

Acknowledgments

“Re-Vision” by Mitchell S. Jackson, excerpted here, was originally published in full on the Center for Fiction website. Elizabeth Hawes’s quote in the “Crafting a Writer’s Life in Prison” section was originally written for and staged at PEN America’s 2019 World Voices Festival.

Immense gratitude to the vast community that stands within and behind this book:

First and foremost, a toast raised to the impressive roster of authors, each of whom wrote through the stress of a pandemic and moved with flexibility, generosity, and purpose in service of a project much larger than any one of us individually. Your tremendous care is felt across these pages. A special thanks reserved for the various allies of the incarcerated contributors who helped make sure the work made it through the walls and into these pages.

Additionally, there are so many voices I thought to include in this book, but alas, not room for them all. Gratitude to the many writers creating and resisting through conditions of confinement who’ve allowed me to be a part of your creative journey, and vice versa. Thank you for teaching me about what it means to be a committed artist. Your influence is all over this book, even if not in name.

Bouquets of flowers to: the time, attention, and vision of Anthony Arnove, Nisha Bosley, Rachel Cohen, Aricka Foreman, and Maya Marshall at the vibrant Haymarket Books for being a team of radical, risk-taking publishers, editors, and publicists. I couldn’t imagine a better home for this project. Special thanks to the sharp eye and insights of copyeditor Michael Trudeau.

To the highly creative, thoughtful, innovative, principled, and purposed PEN America Prison and Justice Writing team who support incarcerated writers in tangible, ethical, and innovative ways on a daily basis. Their voices have all informed the content of this book. At the time of this publication, our team is program manager Robbie Pollock (my sounding board, copilot, and this project’s biggest champion), coordinator Mery Concepcion, and assistant Banu Newell, who painstakingly pulled together the book’s sources. Our 2020–2021 Prison and Justice Writing Program fellow, Frances Keohane, was particularly instrumental and hands-on in gathering resources for this project, with support from intern Jenna Bao. To our seasonal interns who offered the very first notes for our how-to genre chapters, lent their time to essay transcription, and contributed thought leadership to our many endeavors: Mags Chmielarczyk, Liz Fiore, Brookie McIlvaine, and Nicolette Natale. Additional thanks to Claire Adler, who worked on the journalism chapter, helping put together the chapter’s first outline and writing preliminary questions for our interviewees.

A special line reserved for my very first intern, Grace Kearney, who heroically came back during the final round to lend thoughtful edits when we needed to dramatically trim the book’s weighty content. She also brilliantly named the book, pulled from Justin Rovillos Monson’s essay title.

To our PEN America colleagues past and present who fight for freedom of expression with fierce commitment, especially Dru Menaker, PEN America’s chief operating officer and my direct supervisor, who swiftly understood the vision for this project and, as always, supported it to the fullest extent (sky’s the limit!); Michelle Franke, who helped forge inroads with our California-based authors; Katie Zanecchia for expert care in the publishing process; and Deborah Wilson and Tracey Kardash, who helped connect us to funding for this project; Stephen Fee for lending his comms expertise; and of course Suzanne Nossel, PEN America’s chief executive officer, who always searched for—and then found—a way to build the Prison Writing Program. Additionally, I (and we) thank the PEN America Board of Trustees for their ongoing support of this vital part of PEN America’s mission. What a tremendous honor to belong to a work community this powerful, insightful, and giving of themselves. Finally, to Melissa Joskow, PEN America’s brilliant designer, who brought my dream of butterflies made of prison mail to life in such a powerful, honoring way.

To the California Arts Council and New Balloon / Catapult for allowing us to pay our contributors and further distribute the product to our primary audience. Without their generous giving, there would be no book in your hands today. To the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for ensuring this book will reach many thousands of readers in prison. These funds, and all who have donated to PEN America’s work in prisons—currently, the Art for Justice Fund, Jennifer Steele and Jeanne Field in memory of Edward Bunker, Charlotte Jones Voiklis and Crosswicks LLC, the Ethelwyn Doolittle Justice and Outreach Committee at the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of New York, the Greenburger Center for Social and Criminal Justice, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, the Present Progressive Fund at Schwab Charitable, as well as the contributions of many individuals—it is thanks to you that this publication can be sent to audiences behind the walls free of charge. Every book bought helps us continue this project. Gratitude to the Strange Foundation residency for offering time and space away.

To our many committed program staff and volunteers who contributed to the immense history of the PEN Prison Writing Program: Fielding Dawson, Jackson Taylor, Tim Small, Antonio Aiello, Claudia Menza, and the entire Prison Writing Committee, whose shoulders we stand on. I never take for granted that we are a part of a radical, prolific, and historic legacy. I am personally indebted to the inspiration, guidance, and friendship of Bell Chevigny and Susan Rosenberg, who’ve helped to bridge past and present. You each set the road by walking, and our new generation of volunteers continue to clear the path ahead.

Finally, gratitude to all the trailblazers, innovators, cultural workers, activists, and advocates who fight for a better world. I gift you a strong pair of hands, abundant soil, and the softest pillow so you can eat well and take a good long nap. The community of mentors and peers who have planted seeds within me is wonderfully widespread, starting first with my father, Hanns, whose lifelong work in social justice and inclusion offered me language and a strong philosophical foundation for my own.

About the Contributors

Alexa Alemanni is a SAG award-winning actor, screenwriter, and producer. She has taught screenwriting at the New York Film Academy and USC and runs her own writing studio, Bad Pitch Writers Lab.

Raquel Almazan is artistic director of La Lucha Arts and has created several theater pieces centering impacted people, including La Paloma Prisoner and Here to Be Seen: Women in Justice.

Ellen Bass is the author/editor of nine books. Her most recent poetry collection is Indigo (Copper Canyon, 2020). She founded poetry workshops in California prison and jails and teaches at Pacific University.

Reginald Dwayne Betts, after being sentenced to nine years in prison at age sixteen, graduated from Yale Law School. He has published four acclaimed books, most recently the poetry collection Felon (W. W. Norton, 2019).

Keri Blakinger served just under two years in prison and is now an investigative reporter for the Marshall Project. Blakinger is working on a memoir forthcoming from St. Martin’s Press in 2022.

Jennifer Bowen is the founder and artistic director of the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. Her work has appeared in the Sun, Orion, Kenyon Review, the Iowa Review, the Rumpus, and elsewhere.

Zeke Caligiuri is the author of This Is Where I Am: A Memoir (University of Minnesota Press, 2016), a finalist for a 2017 Minnesota Book Award. He has won four PEN Prison Writing Awards.

Kate Cammell is a graduate of Columbia Journalism School. She helped launch and host Temperature Check, PEN’s podcast examining the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on incarcerated communities.

Sterling Cunio, a PEN America Writing for Justice fellow, an Oregon Literary Arts Fellow, and a two-time PEN Prison Writing Award winner, was sentenced to life without parole at age sixteen and has spent twenty-six years in prison.

Chris Daley works as lecturer in writing and library communication coordinator at the California Institute of Technology. She has taught academic and creative writing for over twenty years.

Curtis Dawkins was sentenced to life without parole in 2005. He began writing the day he got to prison and is now the author of the highly acclaimed short story collection The Graybar Hotel (Scribner, 2018).

Emile DeWeaver is a community organizer, writer, and journalist who cofounded Prison Renaissance while serving a sixty-seven-to-life sentence, which was commuted in 2017. He has published over fifty works and guest lectures at social justice venues and universities.

Casey Donahue is the founder of Say It Like You and cofounder of the Story Workers. Casey teaches storytelling for the Moth and publishes a theology newsletter called Omfg.

Ryan Gattis is an award-winning author of Safe, The System, and All Involved. He is a member of the art collective UGLAR Works, a founding board member of arts nonprofit Heritage Future, and a PEN America Prison Writing mentor.

Eli Hager is a reporter at ProPublica whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, This American Life, and elsewhere. He worked previously at the Marshall Project, where he edited the Life Inside series of essays by incarcerated writers.

Ashley Hamilton is an assistant professor of theater at the University of Denver and cofounder and executive director of the DU Prison Arts Initiative (DU PAI).

Kenneth E. Hartman is the award-winning author of Mother California: A Story of Redemption Behind Bars (Atlas & Co. 2009) who served thirty-eight years before his life-without-parole sentence was commuted in 2017. He works for the Transformative In-Prison Workgroup as advocacy coordinator.

Elizabeth Hawes is the recipient of six national PEN Prison Writing Awards, as well as two Minnesota Broadsides. Her work has been published in Stillwater Journal, the PEN Ten interview series, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s A World without Cages and American Theatre magazine.

Randall Horton is the author of Hook: A Memoir and four books of poetry. At the University of New Haven, Dr. Horton is currently the only tenured full professor in the United States with seven felony convictions. He sits on the advisory board of PEN America’s Writing for Justice Fellowship.

Mitchell S. Jackson is the acclaimed author of Survival Math and The Residue Years. His writing has been featured on This American Life and in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, Esquire, and elsewhere. Formerly incarcerated, Jackson is also a social justice advocate who visits prisons in the US and abroad.

Spoon Jackson is a radio producer at Uncuffed: Stories from Solano State Prison, a columnist for the Swedish newspaper Global Oxygen, and frequent contributor to the Good Men Project. Jackson has won four PEN Prison Writing Awards and has been featured in four documentary films.

Nicole Shawan Junior is a Brooklyn-bred, Black, queer counter-storyteller published in Gay Mag and elsewhere. Nicole is also the founder of Roots. Wounds. Words.: A Literary Arts Revolution.

Yukari Iwatani Kane brings her experience from the Wall Street Journal and Reuters to the Prison Journalism Project, where she serves as cofounder and coexecutive director. She is an adjunct lecturer at Northwestern University and an adviser at San Quentin News.

Piper Kerman is the author of the memoir Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison. She serves on the board of numerous prison advocacy groups and has spoken at the White House and testified to Congress in pursuit of justice reform. Piper teaches writing in men’s and women’s prisons.

Lauren Kessler is the author of ten works of narrative nonfiction, including A Grip of Time: When Prison Is Your Life. Kessler teaches workshops in storytelling for social change. Her website is laurenchronicles.com.

Johnny Kovatch authored 59 Hours (Simon & Schuster) and is the founder of the InsideOUT Writers / Prison Insight Program throughout ten California prisons. He was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowships grant by the California Arts Council.

Doran Larson is the author of Witness in the Era of Mass Incarceration: Discovering the Ethical Prison. He is the Walcott-Bartlett Professor of Literature at Hamilton College and founding director of the American Prison Writing Archive.

Victoria Law, after a brief stint as a teenage armed robber, is now a journalist and author focusing on incarceration and resistance. She is also a cofounder of NYC Books through Bars.

Jaeah Lee is an award-winning journalist who has written for the California Sunday Magazine, Topic Stories, Vice News, and other publications. As a staff reporter at Mother Jones, she covered policing after Ferguson.

John J. Lennon is a contributing editor for Esquire and contributing writer for the Marshall Project. He has published essays in the Atlantic, New York Magazine, Sports Illustrated, and elsewhere, and his work appears in 2019’s Best American Magazine Writing. He is in his twentieth year of incarceration.

Arthur Longworth is a six-time PEN Prison Writing Award winner, a PEN America Writing for Justice fellow, and the author of Zek: An American Prison Story (Gabalfa Press, 2016). He is a contributing writer with the Marshall Project and serves as editorial associate for the Prison Journalism Project.

T Kira Mahealani Madden is the author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls: A Memoir (Bloomsbury, 2019) and the founding editor in chief of No Tokens, a magazine of literature and art.

J. D. Mathes is a PEN America Writing for Justice fellow and author of four books, including his memoir Ahead of the Flaming Front: A Life on Fire, awarded the North American Book Prize.

Kate McQueen is a writer and lecturer at University of California, Santa Cruz, specializing in literary journalism, with a focus on narratives of crime and justice. She serves as an editorial adviser to Wall City, San Quentin’s prisoner-run magazine.

Justin Rovillos Monson was a 2018 PEN America Writing for Justice Fellow who has been published in the Asian American Literary Review, Poetry magazine, the Rumpus, the Nation, and elsewhere.

Lateef Mtima is the founder and director of the Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice and a professor of law at Howard University. He is the author of numerous works on intellectual property law.

Vivian D. Nixon is a PEN America Writing for Justice fellow and co-editor of What We Know: Solutions from Our Experiences in the Justice System, published by the New Press in 2020.

Patrick O’Neil is the author of the memoir Gun, Needle, Spoon. He has taught in carceral settings and serves on the board of directors for REDEEMED, a California nonprofit criminal-record-clearing project.

Shaheen Pasha is a veteran journalist, assistant professor at Penn State University, and cofounder and coexecutive director of the Prison Journalism Project. Prior to PJP, Shaheen launched an immersive journalism class at the Hampshire County Jail.

Liza Jessie Peterson is known for her one-woman show, The Peculiar Patriot (available on Audible), and her appearances in Ava DuVernay’s film 13th. She is the author of All Day: A Year of Love and Survival Teaching Incarcerated Kids at Rikers Island (Center Street, 2017).

Nigel Poor is a visual artist and professor at California State University, Sacramento. She is also a volunteer teacher for the Prison University Project and cocreator and cohost of the podcast Ear Hustle.

Wilbert Rideau has won numerous major awards for his work on the American criminal justice system, including an Academy Award nomination for the 1998 documentary The Farm: Angola, USA, which he codirected from prison. He has coedited two anthologies and penned a memoir, In the Place of Justice.

Alejo Rodriguez is chief of curriculum and storytelling at Zealous. Rodriguez’s poems can be found in Doing Time and The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. He teaches at Columbia Law School.

Luis J. Rodriguez is the author of sixteen books, including the bestselling memoir Always Running: La Vida Loca; Gang Days in LA. He is the founder of Tia Chucha Press and a former Los Angeles poet laureate.

Susan Rosenberg’s memoir, An American Radical, details her sixteen -plus years in federal prison before being granted clemency by then President Bill Clinton in 2001. She is an adjunct lecturer at Hunter College.

Geraldine Sealey is the managing editor of the Marshall Project, where she has edited many personal essays and reported stories from incarcerated and formerly incarcerated contributors.

Sarah Shourd is an investigative journalist, playwright, and award-winning author of three books who is known for her advocacy against solitary confinement. Her play, The BOX, which she wrote, directed, and produced, premiered to sold-out audiences in 2016.

Anderson Smith teaches creative writing in prisons throughout New York with Rehabilitation through the Arts (RTA), and serves on the board of directors for the Justice Arts Coalition.

Derek R. Trumbo Sr. is a dramatist, winner of multiple PEN Prison Writing Awards, and part-time mentor to all those who seek purpose in imprisonment.

Louise K. Waakaa’igan (formerly known as Karol L. House) is an Anishinaabe poet whose first collection, This Is Where (Aquarius Press, 2020), shares a title with her PEN Prison Writing Award-winning poem.

Andy Warner is author of three books, including the New York Times bestseller Brief Histories of Everyday Objects, and a contributing editor at the Nib. He teaches at Stanford University and the Animation Workshop in Denmark.

Thomas Bartlett Whitaker is the founder of Minutes Before Six, an online literary journal for incarcerated writers. A three-time PEN Prison Writing Award winner and PEN America Writing for Justice fellow, Thomas earned his MA in humanities from California State University from behind bars.

John R. Whitman is cofounder and executive director of the Museum for Black Innovation and Entrepreneurship and teaches at the Ko-god School of Business at American University.

Earlonne Woods is the coproducer, cohost, and cocreator of the podcast Ear Hustle. His sentence was commuted in November 2018 after twenty-one years of incarceration.

Saint James Harris Wood’s award-winning fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in the Sun, Esquire, Boulevard, and elsewhere. His most recent novel, Narcotic Field Theory, has been sold and will be in bookstores soon . . . if they haven’t all perished in the apocalypse.

Jeffrey L. Young is a PEN Prison Writing Award winner and associate editor of the Prison Mirror, a publication run out of the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Stillwater.

Permissions

Agha Shahid Ali, “Tonight” from Call Me Ishmael Tonight: A Book of Ghazals. Copyright © 2003 by Agha Shahid Ali. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Matsuo Basho, haiku [“On the withered branch”] translated by Donald Keene, from World Within Walls: Japanese Literature of the Pre-Modern Era 1600–1867. Copyright © 1999 by Donald Keene. Reprinted by permission of Columbia University Press.

Robert Frost, “Tree at My Window” from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem Copyright 1928 by Henry Holt and Company, Inc., renewed 1951, © 1956 by Robert Frost. Reprinted by permission of the publishers.

Kennedy Gisege, “A Day in Prison” from The Liturgy of Smell (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2016). Copyright © 2016 by Kennedy Gisege. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

Terrence Hayes, “American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin” [“I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison”] from American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin. Copyright © 2018 by Terrence Hayes. Used by permission of Penguin, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Etheridge Knight, haiku from The Essential Etheridge Knight. Copyright © 1986. Reprinted by permission of University of Pittsburgh Press.

Christina MacNaughton, excerpt from “Just Another Death” from I’ll fly away: Further testimonies from the women of York Prison, edited and introduced by Wally Lamb (New York: Harper-Collins, 2007). Reprinted by permission.

“I Used To Love H.E.R.” Words and Music by Lonnie Lynn and Ernest Wilson Copyright © 1994 Songs of Universal, Inc., Senseless Music, Chrysalis Music, and No I.D. Music Publishing. All Rights for Senseless Music Controlled and Administered by Songs of Universal, Inc. All Rights for No I.D. Music Publishing Controlled and Administered by Chrysalis Songs. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC.

Louise K. Waakaa’igan, “This is Where” (Willow, 2020). Reprinted by permission of the author.

Index

A

Abbott, Jack Henry, 142–43

Abu-Jamal, Mumia, xxiv

Accidental Death of an Anarchist (Fo), 61

Achebe, Chinua, xii

ACLU, 116

actors, 61–62, 71–72, 75, 198, 211, 215

acts, 67, 70, 71, 77–79, 164

A Day in Prison (Gisege), 267

Adbusters (magazine), 177

adjectives, 31, 40, 131, 144, 243

adverbs, 40, 131, 132, 144–45

advocacy, 111

self, 165, 195–200

advocates, xviii, 100, 197, 232, 277, 296

criminal-reform, 211

professors as, 236

volunteer, xiv

agents, xv, 173, 178, 183

Albee, Edward, 60

Alexander, Michelle, xxii, 199

Alexie, Sherman, xii

Ali, Agha Shahid, 10

Amberchele, J. C., 139–41

American Prison Writing Archive, 255

American Sonnets for My Past and Future

Assassin (Hayes), 9

Anderson, Alvin, 120

Anderson, Terry, 283

Angola, 48, 114

Angolite (newsmagazine), 114, 116–19

The Animal Factory (Bunker), 50

Ann Arbor, 172

Antioch University, xxii

A Plague of Prisons (Drucker), 199

apostrophes, 144

Appleman, Dr. Deborah, 235

A Raisin in the Sun (Hansberry), 60

Are Prisons Obsolete? (Davis), xxii, 199

Aristotle, 287

article (part of speech), 131

articles (essays), 146, 197, 202

academic, 102

news, 109, 121–22

op-eds, 126

Arts in Corrections, 217, 219

Associated Press, 132, 139

Atlantic (magazine), 106, 127–28

atmosphere, 22, 33–34, 268, 285

At Night I Fly (podcast), 220

Attica uprising, xxiii

Auburn State Prison, 210, 213

Austin’s Echo (Cunio), 210–212

The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Haley), 135

B

Baca, Jimmy Santiago, 238

Backwards & Forwards (Ball), 62

Baldwin, James, xii

Ball, David, 62, 64

Bambara, Toni Cade, xii

Bankston, Jane, 119

Baraka, Amiri, 290

Bashō, Matsuo, 11

Beckett, Samuel, 60, 217

Beirut, 283

Betts, Reginald Dwayne, 241

bias, 97, 99, 103, 153

Biela, Patricia, 290

Bird by Bird (Lamott), 42

Birds Eye View (podcast), 112

Black Arts Movement, 290

Blake, William, 13

Blakinger, Keri, 96, 101–2

Blank, Radha, 241

blank verse, 13

Bloch, Ben, 261

Blood in My Eye (Jackson), 41

Boekbinder, Zoe, 219

Bogotá, Colombia, 278

Bolz-Weber, Nadia, 247

The BOX (Shourd), 64–66, 70–71

Broadway Advocacy Coalition, 198

Bronx Defenders, 245

Brooklyn, 244

Brown, Derrick, 290

Brown, James, 49

Buck, Marilyn, xxiv

Bull (literary journal), 172

Bunker, Edward, 30, 41, 50, 141–42

Burch, Aaron, 172

Bureau of Prisons, 123

By Heart (Jackson and Tannenbaum), 217

C

Cabrera, C. Fausto, 236

California, 3, 59, 104, 110, 113, 244, 275

California Medical Facility, 42

Caligiuri, Zeke, 233

Cammell, Kate, 97

Campbell, Joseph, 164, 166

Casella, Jean, 58

Cather, Willa, 265

causation chains, 80

cause and effect, 26–29, 36

Cave Canem, 290

Central America, 4

centrality of action, 62

Chandler, Raymond, 33–40

chapbooks, 205–7, 209, 217, 238, 267

character, 150, 178, 186–88, 202–4, 211, 214, 255–56, 258, 268, 285–86

fiction, 16–18, 20–21, 24–25, 28–31, 34–39

film, 77–82, 84

graphic narrative, 86–87, 91

journalism, 98–99, 111, 113, 123

memoir, 45–46, 49–52

theater, 59–73, 280–82

Chekhov, Anton, 61

Cheney, Theodore A., 150–151

The Cherry Orchard (Chekhov), 61

Chevigny, Bell Gale, xxiii

Chicago, 12–13, 122

Chicago Manual of Style, 132

Chicago State University, 291

Chicago Tribune, 122

Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War, 2

Cisneros, Sandra, 241

Civil War, 195

Clifton, Lucille, xii, 290

climax, 67, 69, 71, 78–80, 84, 160

Coleman, Wanda, 290

Coleridge, Samuel, 13

collaboration, xix, 216–20, 233, 278, 280

advocates, 197–98, 200

jam comics, 86

revision, 162

theater, 67–68, 211, 215

collectives, 233, 234, 236–38

Colombia, 278

colons, 132, 141–42

Columbia Journalism Review, 119

comics, 85–95

diary, 94

jam, 86

mini, 91–92

“Coming into Language” (Baca), 238

commas, 136, 139–41

Oxford (serial), 139

splice, 134, 138, 141, 153

Common, 12–13

community, 17, 107–8, 113, 118–19, 121, 151, 183, 199

Arts in Corrections, 219

political, 2, 3

theater, 211, 215

writing, xiii, xv, xvii–xviii, 44, 199, 206–9, 221, 225, 231–51

Compton, 275

concept building, 57–58

Concrete Carnival (Darcleight), 255

conjunctions, 40, 131, 134–35, 140–41

contests, xi–xiv, xxiii–xxv, 14, 43–44, 111, 167, 205–7, 212, 257

conventions, 153

genre, 16

grammar, 130–32

theater, 61–68, 71

Coomaraswamy, A. K., 154

copyright, 180–84, 188

Copyright Office, 181, 183

cover letters, 127–28, 176–78

Covid-19, xviii, 123, 126, 198, 212–13, 244

Creative Commons, 181

creative nonfiction, 44–45, 223

Creative Writing Guild, 42

Cummings, Ray, 47

Cunio, Sterling, 258

D

Darcleight, Danner, 255

dashes, 141–43

Davis, Angela, xxii, 199

Dawkins, Curtis, 25

Department of Corrections, 108, 119, 245, 264

Department of Probation, 240 “Desert Island” Dawkins, 171–72

design, 61, 67, 88–91, 113, 208, 211–12

detail, 17, 25, 33–37, 42, 204, 222, 250, 256, 266, 269–70, 274–75, 278, 282, 285–86

concrete, 19, 30–32, 40

copyright, 183

film, 82

journalism, 99, 103, 105, 112–13, 123–24

memoir, 44–46, 49–50, 52–55

poetry, 261–63

theater, 63

dialogue, 22–23, 34–36

film, 80–83

graphic narrative, 87

memoir, 44–45, 49, 51–52

theater, 60–64, 68, 72

Díaz, Jaquira, 241

Diaz, Natalie, xii

Dickinson, Emily, 13

DiFranco, Ani, 219

Dijkstra, Sandra, 173

Doing Time (Chevigny), xxiii, 133

Down These Mean Streets (Thomas), 49

drama, xxi, 4, 26, 64, 72, 78, 165, 187, 284–86

dramatic theater. See theater Dreyer, Benjamin, 145

Dreyer’s English (Dreyer), 145

Drift (King), 290

Drucker, Ernest, 199

Durham, North Carolina, 289

Dylan, Bob, 176

E

Ear Hustle (podcast), 110–114

Eastern Correctional Facility, 195

East Los Angeles, 2

Easy Street (magazine), 151

editing, 22, 39–40, 60, 69–70, 92, 132, 160, 177

collaboration, xix, 162, 224

composing vs., 21, 232

fiction and, 21–22, 39

journalism, 97, 102, 108–110, 125

revising vs., 153–54

time limits, 248

editorial journalism, 97–98, 126

editors, 96–97, 99–100, 103, 114, 142, 145, 162, 226

collaboration, 133, 224

Dawkins as, 173

pitching to, 105, 126–29, 147–48, 175–78

Rideau as, 116–20

Whitaker as, 167

Young as, 107–110

Education of a Felon (Bunker), 41

Eighth Amendment, 122

Elegies for New York Avenue (Henderson), 290

“Eleven Days under Siege” (Mulryan), 144–45

ellipses, 143

Endgame (Beckett), 60

Esquire (magazine), 128, 177, 179

Essais (de Montaigne), 155

Eugenides, Jeffrey, 26

Europe, 4, 13

Evans, Danielle, xii

Excavation (Ortiz), 48

exclamation points, 142

exercises, 243, 253–89. See also prompts

breathing, 273–74

graphic narrative, 85–86

location-based, 276

memoir, 46–47, 51

memory, 266–67

metacognitive, 273–75

mindfulness, 244

object-based, 269–71

playwriting, 69, 280–82

transitions, 149

warm-up, 85–86, 232, 247, 256

word prompts, 258–60

writing to the ancestors, 278–79

experimentation, 64, 69–71, 200

exposition, 65–66, 69, 213, 286

F

“Facility Bread” (Waakaa’igan), 207

fact-checking, 99–100, 102

falling action, 67

fantasy, xii, 16

Faulkner, William, xii

feature stories, 98–99, 122, 128–129

Federal Bureau of Prisons, 185, 188

feedback, 68–69, 92, 108, 207, 213, 215, 247–48, 257, 264, 283–84

fellowships, x, 167, 210–212, 221–26, 229, 290–91

fiction, 3, 50, 151, 172, 189, 255, 289

cause and effect, 26–29, 36

chapter breaks, 18, 24

character, 16–18, 20–21, 24–25, 28–31, 34–39, 63, 186

definition of, 16–17

detail, 30–32, 34–35, 40

dialogue, 34–36

editing, 21–22, 39–40

forms of, 17–18

graphic narrative, 85

hooks, 23–24, 26

irony, 25

journalism and, 98

narrative arc, 47–48

non sequitur, 25–26

plot, 16–18, 26–28, 36–37

poetry and, 4

practice, 22, 31

publishing of, 29

setting, 17, 24, 34, 37

theme, 20–21

word choice, 39

film, 3, 30, 51, 75–84, 200, 280–82

character, 77–82, 84

First Amendment, 101

first drafts

composing, 21–22, 42, 59–60, 186

editing, 52, 66, 72, 145

sharing, 68, 92

first-person journalism, 98–99

flash fiction, 17–18

Florida, xxii, 278

Floyd, George, 208

Fo, Dario, 61

Folger Theatre, 290

formatting, 73, 82–83

Franklin, Jon, 106

“Freedom for the Prisoners” (Jackson), 218

Free Southern Theater, 248

free verse, 13–14

Freire, Paulo, 272

French, Kelley Benham, 122

From the Inside Out (anthology), 235

Frost, Robert, 7–8

Furious Flower, 290

G

Gaines, Patrice, 241

The Galton Case (MacDonald), 27–29

Gamboa, Manual “Manazar,” 3

genre, xv, 16, 66, 85, 98

Germany, 217

gesture, 33–34, 34, 36–37

Getting the Words Right (Cheney), 150–51

ghazals, 10

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 32, 39

Giovanni, Nikki, 290

Gisege, Kennedy, 267

Google Docs, 133

Gornick, Vivian, 106

Graham, David, 127–28

grammar, x, 130–46, 150, 257

graphic narrative, 85–95

The Graybar Hotel (Dawkins), 25, 173

grievances, xiv, 191–92

Guirgis, Stephen Adly, 60

H

Hager, Eli, 96, 102–3, 106

haikus, 11

Haley, Jarrett, 172–73

Hall of Justice, 2–3

Handbook for Writers in Prison, xiv–xv, xxii

Hannah, Barry, 157

Hansberry, Lorraine, 60

Harper’s (magazine), 106

Hart, Jack, 106

Hartman, Kenneth E., 96, 101, 104, 106

Hartman, Saidiya, 227

Hawes, Elizabeth, 164–65

Hayes, Terrance, 9

“Heart of the High Desert” (Jackson), 216

Hemley, Robin, 266

Henderson, Melanie, 290

Henning, Dianna, 219

Hero’s Journey, 164–66, 235

Hersher, Rebecca, 122

Himes, Chester, 134

hip-hop, 12–13, 22

Hobart (literary journal), 172

Hook (Horton), 48, 288

hooks, 23–24, 26

Horton, Randall, 48, 207

Housing Works Bookstore, xiv

Howard University, 198

How You Lose (Amberchele), 139–41

I

identity, 46, 70, 99, 117, 166, 273, 278

“If All My Relationships Fail and I Have No Children Do I Even Know What Love Is” (Rosal), 262

“Ignorance Is No Excuse for the Law” (Rodriguez), 140

imagery, 4, 7, 13, 44, 45, 285–86

inciting incident, 56, 64–66, 77, 79–80, 84

Innocence Project, 245

Inside Report (newspaper), 280

intellectual property, 183

interjection, 131

interview, xvii, 91, 92, 97, 99, 103, 108, 112, 123–25, 173, 196

In the Belly of the Beast (Abbott), 142–43

In the Place of Justice (Rideau), 114

Iowa Review (magazine), 177, 179

Iran, 56

Iraq, 265

Isay, Dave, 246

Israel, Baba, 210, 213

J

Jackson, George, 41

Jackson, Mitchell, 241

Jackson, Spoon, xix

Jamaica, 272

James, Henry, 254

James Madison University, 290

James, Marlon, xii

Jay-Z, 241, 243

Jemisin, N. K., xii

Jesus Hopped the “A” Train (Guirgis), 60

Joiner, Fred, 290

Jones, Robert, Jr., xii

Jones, Tayari, xii

Jonson, Jan, 217

journalism, xvii, 3, 51, 96–97, 99–100, 132, 182, 280–81

behind bars, 100, 106–14

character, 98–99, 111, 113, 123

ethics, 103–4

opinion essay, 126

pitching, 105, 126–29

podcast, 110

reference guide, 121–29

Rideau on, 114–22

types of, 98–99

Journal of a State-Raised Prisoner in the Age of Mass Incarceration (Longworth), 223

journals, xviii, xxiv, 41, 48, 131, 167, 169, 172, 199, 223, 255, 280

The Joy Luck Club (Tan), 173

Junebug Productions, 248 “Just Another Death” (MacNaughton), 43

Just Leadership USA, 245

Just Mercy (Stevenson), xxii

K

Kafka, Franz, 17

Kaiser, Michael, 260

Kantor, Henry, 153, 157

Kentucky, 201

Kerman, Piper, 221

Kessler, Lauren, 212, 221

King, Alan, 290

Knight, Etheridge, 11–12

Knutsen, Kimberly, 172

Koontz, Dean, 41

Koppel, Ted, 120

L

LA County, 219

The Lady in the Lake (Chandler), 33–40

Lamar, Kendrick, 241

Lamb, Wally, 221

Lamott, Anne, 42

Lancaster Prison, 219

Lascaux Review (magazine), 151

Las Vegas Sun, 122

Law, Victoria, 96, 102, 104–7

lede, 121, 122

Lennon, John, 183

Lennon, John J., xii, 96, 100–101, 104, 106

Leonard, Elmore, 24

Liar (Roberge), 49

libraries, 2, 93, 102, 107, 109, 172, 176, 191, 197, 226

Lifer (magazine), 116

Lifers Association, 116

Lish, Gordon, 160

Little Boy Blue (Bunker), 141–42

The Liturgy of Smell (Gisege), 267

London, Jack, 139

Long Beach Police Department, 113

Long Island, 49

Los Angeles, 244

The Los Angeles Diaries (Brown), 49

Louisiana, 114, 117, 119–20

Louisiana ACLU, 116

Louisiana State Penitentiary, 48, 114

M

Macdonald, Ross, 27–29

MacNaughton, Christina, 43–44

Madhubuti, Haki, 290–91

magazines, 51, 98, 106–7, 114, 116, 120, 127–28, 132, 151, 173, 176–79, 255, 281

Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award, 290

“Making a Case for Rhetorical Grammar” (Micciche), 143, 146

Manson, Charles, 2

manuscript, 147, 173, 181, 206–7, 217

Marshall Project, 101, 103

Maryland, 198, 288

McCartney, Paul, 183

McCloud, Rich, 213

McCloud, Scott, 90

McConnel, Patricia, 137–38, 140

Meissner, Caits, 97, 210–11, 213, 215

memoir, xi, 3, 114, 117, 177, 188, 194, 210, 217

chapter breaks, 49

character, 46, 49–52

creative nonfiction, 44–45

definition of, 42

graphic narrative, 85

narrative arc, 47–48

prompts, 46–47, 51

screenwriting vs., 75

setting, 49–50

timeline, 46–48

vulnerability in, 43–44

writing community, 234, 241, 249

memory, xii, xxi, 13, 42, 45, 46, 49, 53–55, 60, 124, 151, 156, 159, 164, 208, 232–33, 243, 264–69, 274, 288

metaphor, 4, 7, 9, 13, 77, 147, 155, 261, 263, 284

Mexica culture, 4

Mexico, 4

Micciche, Laura R., 143, 146

Michigan, 171, 229, 250

Microsoft Word, 133

Middlesex (Eugenides), 26

Millar, Joseph, 261

Mill Creek, 153

Mill Pond, 192

Milton, John, 13

Minneapolis, 208, 234

Minnesota, 108, 234, 237, 264, 265

Minnesota Correctional Facility-Stillwater, 107, 109

Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop, 107, 206, 235, 265–66

Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, 107–8

Minutes Before Six (web journal), 169

Modern Language Association, 132

Moments of Reality (Jonson), 217–18, 220

monologue, 66, 70, 277, 280, 282

de Montaigne, Michel, 155

Montgomery County Detention Center, 288

Month of Mondays, 217

Morrison, Toni, xii

Mosley, Walter, xi

Moth, 245

Mulryan, Paul, 144–45

Multnomah County Courthouse, 157

Muskegon, Michigan, 171

Myhre, Wil, 259

N

NAACP Image Award, 290

Nabokov, Vladimir, 161

narrative arc, 47–49

National Book Award, 9

National Endowment of the Arts Literature Fellowship, 291

National Magazine Award, 128

National Public Radio, 122, 245

Native American, 208

Ndosi, Mankwe, 205

Neto, Charles R. Butler, 130–31

New England, 7

New Folsom Prison, 218–19

The New Jim Crow (Alexander), xxii, 199

New Orleans, 116

news, 51, 97–99, 102, 110, 121–22, 182

New Village Press, 217

New York, xiv, xxii, 104, 162, 190–91, 194, 220, 240, 245, 272, 278

New Yorker (magazine), 106, 178

Nightline, 120

No Beast So Fierce (Bunker), 30

nonfiction, 3, 172, 255, 288. See also memoir

American Prison Writing Archive, 255

contests, x

creative, 44–45, 223

graphic narrative, 85

historical, 44

journalism vs., 97, 100

narrative, 106

PEN Prison Writing Contest, 257

poetry and, 4

short stories, 41

writing workshops, 42

North Carolina, 289

Norway, 217

nouns, 16, 37, 40, 131, 134, 136, 144, 148, 196

novellas, 18

novels, xii, 20, 22, 24, 44, 107, 147, 147–48, 150, 153, 168–69, 172–73, 177, 284, 288

composing, 22

definition of, 18

memoir and, 44

quotes from, 26, 33–39, 139

revising, 151, 160, 284

screenwriting vs., 75

theater vs., 72

“Nowhere but Barstow and Prison” (Jackson), 219

O

Oedipus Rex (Sophocles), 61

Olds, Sharon, 262

Olsson, Anna “Neah,” 218

On Writing Well (Zinsser), xxii

op-eds, 126, 128

Orange Is the New Black (Kerman), 186, 188

Oregon, 153

Oregon State Penitentiary, 257–58

Ortiz, Wendy C., 48

Oswego, 191

Out of Sight (Leonard), 24

Overtime (Millar), 261

P

page layout, 89

panels, 86–90, 92, 94

parentheses, 35, 73, 142–43

Parker, Pat, 288, 291

Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire), 272

Pelican Bay State Prison, 59

Pelican Bay Unlocked (podcast), 112

Pell Grants, xxiv

“The Pen: Long Days in a County Penitentiary” (London), 139

PEN America, xxii, 179

Doing Time (anthology), xxiii, 133

Prison and Justice Writing Program, xiii–xiv, xxv, 199, 210

Prison Writing Committee, xxi–xxiv, xxii–xxiv

Prison Writing Contest, xi–xii, xiii, xxii–xxiii, 14, 43–44, 212, 224, 257

Writing for Justice Fellowship, 210, 222–24

performing, 13, 58, 61, 62, 66, 70, 180, 203, 210, 212, 218, 227, 232, 242, 277, 289

periods, 139, 141

personal essay, 105, 192, 264

Peterson, Liza Jessie, 232–33

Piercy, Marge, 257

Pioneer Playhouse, 202

pitches, 51, 96, 105–7, 126–29, 156

plays, 57–74, 189, 191, 202–4, 210–215, 249, 255, 284. See also theater

exercises, 280–82

Moments of Reality (Jonson), 217–18, 220

vulnerability, 165

playwriting, 280–82

plot, 16, 22, 25–27, 36–37, 39, 44, 61, 62, 64, 69–70, 98, 150, 268

podcasts, 110–12, 220, 245, 280

Poe, Edgar Allen, 251

poetry, xi, xiv, xix, xxi–xxii, 2–15, 140, 165, 176, 192–93, 216–20, 233, 261–63, 264, 283, 289–90

“A Day in Prison” (Gisege), 267

collective, 70, 279

contests, 207

copyright, 182

definition of, 4

drama and, 4

erasure, 229

fiction and, 4

forms, 7–15

love, 195–196, 200

manuscripts, 206–7

meter, 8, 13

nonfiction and, 4

Piercy, 257

prompts for, 5–6, 261–63, 279

rhyme, 7–9, 14

trauma and, 5

Poets & Writers, 172

political prisoners, xxiv

Poor, Nigel, 96, 110–14

Pop Smoke, 244

Portland, 156

prepositions, 37, 131, 135, 145

prewriting, 57–59

Prince George’s County, Maryland, 198

prison-industrial complex, xxii

Prison Journalism Project, 100, 121

Prison Mirror (newspaper), 107–110

Prison Music Project, 219

Prison Policy Initiative, 109

Prison Writing in 20th-Century America (anthology), 133

project description, 223

prompts, 187, 247, 266–67, 273–74, 275–76, 278–79

graphic narrative, 91–92

memoir, 46–47, 51

object-based, 269–71

poetry, 5–6, 261–63

theater, 281–82

word, 258–60

pronouns, 37, 42, 131, 134, 136, 146, 148–49

proposals, 109, 110, 199, 211, 222–23, 226, 241

publication, 98, 126, 101, 107–9, 114–19

publishers, 140, 172, 173, 176, 178, 182–83, 207, 224

publishing, xvii–xviii, 132–33, 140, 155, 167, 175–79, 183, 202, 238

By Heart (Jackson and Tannenbaum), 217

Concrete Carnival (Darcleight), 255

Drift (King), 290

fiction, 29, 147–51, 171–73, 188, 206–8

From the Inside Out, 235

graphic narrative, 92

journalism, 58, 99–101, 103, 107, 116–18, 126–29

legal papers, 115

memoir, 217, 224–25, 234

poetry, 13, 205

self-, xv

style guides, 132

This Is Where I Am (Caligiuri), 234

Wisdom Teeth (Brown), 290

Pulitzer Prize, 111

punctuation, 40, 131–32, 135–36, 139–42

Pushcart Prize, 224

Q

Q&As, 125

quatrains, 7–8

questioning, 24, 103, 195, 196, 222, 257, 283–87

question marks, 139

quotation marks, 140, 142

quotations, xviii, 97, 99, 102–3, 122–25, 140, 142–43, 225, 272

R

radio, 37, 98, 111, 137, 190, 220, 245, 259

Random House, 145

rap, xii, 12–13

Reed, Justin Phillip, 227

reference guides, 19, 100

references, 226

rejections, 106, 147, 148, 175–76

Renaissance, 13

research, 59, 182, 192, 247

fiction, 19

journalism, 97, 106

theater, 58, 60, 70, 212, 215

resources, xvii, 156, 199, 200, 206, 224, 226, 236–37, 241, 294–301

Handbook for Writers in Prison, xiv–xv

theater, 59

revision, 144, 148, 151, 153–55, 157, 160–62, 186, 256, 257

memoir, 46, 52–53, 224

poetry, 206–7

theater, 68–71

Rideau, Wilbert, xvii, 97, 114–20

Rikers Island, 245–46

rising action, 67

Roberge, Rob, 49

Rockville, Maryland, 288

Rodriguez, Alejo, 140

Roethke, Theodore, 2

romance, 16

Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare), 203

Rosal, Patrick, 262

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (Stoppard), 60

Rule of 3, 88–89

S

Säfsten, Stefan, 218

Salazar, Ruben, 2–3

Salinas Valley State Prison, 261

sample. See work sample Sanchez, Sonia, 290

San Diego, 173

San Francisco, 41

San Francisco Orchestra, 218

San Quentin State Prison, 110, 113, 217–18, 220

Santa Rita Jail, 147–148

Santiam, 153

scene, 250, 256, 258, 286

fiction, 18, 20, 22, 26–27, 31, 37, 160

film, 79, 81–83

journalism, 123–124, 129

memoir, 45–46, 49–52

theater, 64, 67, 69–70, 73, 210, 212, 214, 279, 282

Schmit, John, 235

screenwriting, 75–84, 283

causation chain, 80

formatting, 82–83

structure, 77–79

subtext, 80–81

Scribner, 173

scripts, xiv, 241–42

film, 81

graphic narrative, 92

interview, 125

theater, 56, 61–63, 68, 72, 215

Sealey, Geraldine, 96, 100, 102–3, 105

Seattle Times (newspaper), 225

self-advocacy, 165, 195–200

semicolons, 141

setting

fiction, 17, 24, 34, 37, 150, 286

graphic narrative, 86

memoir, 45, 49–50

theater, 280–81

Shakespeare, William, 8

Shakur, Tupac, xxii

short story, xxi–xxii, 18, 20–21, 24, 39, 49, 179, 241

publishing, 167

revision, 151, 284–87

similes, 6, 7, 38, 262

Simon & Schuster, 173

Sing Sing, 128–29

“Sing Soft, Sing Loud” (McConnel), 137–38, 140

“Skinhead” (Smith), 289

slam, 4, 13, 289

Smitherman, William Myrl, 44–45

Smith, Marc K., 13

Smith, Patricia, 289

Smithsonian (magazine), 106

Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, 116

Snook, Cheri, 219

Socrates, 15

Sojourn (journal), 280

“Sole Custody” (Millar), 261

solitary confinement, xxiii, 41, 70, 114, 193, 223, 225

writing about, 58–59, 62–63, 127

writing in, xxi, 56

Solitary (Woodfox), 48

sonnets, 4, 8–9

Son of Sam laws, 104

Sophocles, 61

sources, 167

journalism, 99–101, 103, 106, 109, 123

memoir, 42

theater, 58

South America, 4

South Asia, 10

Spanish Harlem, 49

Spanish language, 3

Speak Water, Thomas, 290

spoken word, 13, 189, 214, 219

Sports Illustrated (magazine), 127–29

stage directions, 61, 67, 72–73

“Star” (Jackson), 218

Steinbeck, John, 175–76

Stein, Gertrude, xii

Stevenson, Bryan, xxii

Stillwater Correctional Facility, 234–37

Stillwater Poetry Group, 235

Stillwater Writers’ Collective, 233–34

Stockton, Phil, 215

Stoppard, Tom, 60

StoryCorps, 246

Storycraft (Hart), 106

storytelling, 22, 41, 188, 198, 200, 245–51

film, 80–81

graphic narrative, 85, 92, 94

journalism, 98

narrative arc, 48

podcast, 110

techniques, 23–32

workshop, 240–44

St. Petersburg Times, 122

structure, xxii, 45, 94

fiction, 16–18, 31

film, 77–80

Hero’s Journey, 164

journalism, 129

memoir, 47–49

poetry, 7–15, 207

revision, 157

sentence, 40, 143, 146

theater, 57, 60–61, 280

Student Initiative Press, 235

style, 7, 16–17, 23, 38, 44, 160

graphic narrative, 90, 94

guides, 132–33, 139–40, 145, 292

journalism, 98, 105, 121, 129

theater, 67, 69

submissions, xviii, xxii–xxiii, 147, 164, 169, 175–79, 212, 222, 226, 291

copyright, 181–82

journalism, 105, 127

Steinbeck’s, 175–76

Sullivan, Eric, 128

“Summer Solstice, New York City” (Olds), 262

Sun (magazine), 177, 179

“Superman” (DeWeaver), 151

Sweden, 217–19

syllables, 4, 8, 11, 14

T

Tallent, Elizabeth, 24

Tan, Amy, 173

Tannenbaum, Judith, 216–220

Taylor, Jackson, xiv

Teaism, 289

Texas, 168

theater, xiv, 56–74, 167, 210–215, 213, 280–282

character, 59–73, 280–282

collaboration, 67–68, 211, 215

community, 211, 215

conflict, 64, 284

conventions, 61–67

genre, 66

theme, 10, 20, 21, 61, 62, 75, 126, 207, 248, 276, 281

The Situation and the Story (Gornick), 106

“The Star-Spangled Banner”, 130–131

This Is Where I Am (Caligiuri), 234

This Is Where (Waakaa’igan), 205, 207

Thomas, Piri, 49

Thomas, Rahsaan “New York”, 110

Thomas, Truth, 290

Thompson, Hunter S., 129

three-act structure, 77–79

three-strikes

sentencing, 41

timeline, 46, 48, 137, 207

“To What Red Hell?” (Himes), 134

transitions, 8, 90, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 157

trauma, 53–55, 103, 186, 233, 242, 248, 278, 288

childhood, 47, 223

poetry and, 5, 261

retraumatization, xxiii

Triton (magazine), 173

U

Uncuffed (podcast), 112, 220

United States, 218, 232, 255

copyright law, 182, 183

Eighth Amendment, 122

First Amendment, 101

first Black prisoner publication in, 119

first prisoner-run writers’ collective in, 234

irst Black prisoner publication in, 116

number incarcerated in, xxii

solitary confinement in, 58, 63

South, 168

University of Denver Prison Arts Initiative, 280

University of Minnesota Press, 234

University of the District of Columbia, 291

usage, 142

US Copyright Office, 181, 183

V

Vacaville, California, 42

Vague Metaphors, 289

VanDyke, Paul, 266

verbs, 40, 131–38, 144–46, 153, 196, 284

Vietnam War, 2

Voices Inside, 203

W

Waakaa’igan, Louise K., 14

Waiting for Godot (Beckett), 217

Washington, 224–25

Washington, DC, 181, 289–91

Washington Post Magazine, 128

“What Keeps Me Sane?” (Kaiser), 260

“Where I’m From” (Jay-Z), 243

“Where the Wild Things Are” (Smither-man), 44–45

White Hawk, Dyani, 208

Whitman, Walt, 13

Wideman, John, xii

Wiley, Kehinde, 241

Willamette University, 212

Williams, Antwan, 110, 113

Williams, Robert Wayne, 119

Willow Books, 205, 206

Wilson, Edmund, 156

Winn, Anthony, xii

Wisdom Teeth (Brown), 290

With(in) (podcast), 280

witnessing, xii, xxv, 53, 80, 167, 186, 188, 222, 277

women’s prison, xxi, 43

Woodfox, Albert, 48

Woods, Earlonne, 97, 110–14

word choice, 30, 33, 35, 39, 143, 146

work sample, xvi, 226

workshop, 249, 266, 268, 278

audience, 42, 251

community, 100, 199, 205–6, 238, 289

graphic narrative, 91–94

inspiration, xxi–xxii, 41, 238

organizing, 235, 238, 241–44, 245–46, 248, 254

poetry, 3, 195, 205–6, 261, 264

revision, 128, 250, 283

self-, 284–87

Writer’s Market, 176

writing collectives. See collectives

Writing exercises. See exercises

Writingfor Story (Franklin), 106

Y

“The Yellow Wallpaper” (Gilman), 32, 39

Young, Jeffrey L., 96, 107–110, 265

Z

Zinsser, William, xxii

The Zoo Story (Albee), 60

About the Editor

Caits Meissner is the Director of Prison and Justice Writing at PEN America. She is also the author and illustrator of the hybrid poetry book Let It Die Hungry (The Operating System, 2016). A multidisciplinary creator, Meissner’s written and visual work has been published in venues including the Guardian, Harper’s Bazaar, Medium’s Human Parts, The Literary Review, Narrative, Adroit, Drunken Boat, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, [Pank], The Journal, and The Offing, among others.