PRISON WRITING PROGRAM

Founded in 1971, the PEN Prison Writing Program believes in the restorative and rehabilitative power of writing, by providing hundreds of inmates across the country with skilled writing teachers and audiences for their work. The program seeks to provide a place for inmates to express themselves freely with paper and pen and to encourage the use of the written word as a legitimate form of power. The program sponsors an annual writing contest, publishes a free handbook for prisoners, provides one-on-one mentoring to inmates whose writing shows merit or promise, conducts workshops for former inmates, and seeks to get inmates' work to the public through literary publications and readings.

PEN's Handbook for Writers in Prison features detailed guides on the art of writing fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenplays. This is an invaluable resource to any incarcerated writer. Send a handbook to a writer in Prison.

The 25/12 Campaign:
Help Support the Prison Writing Program! Send 12 handbooks to writers in prison.

Members of the Prison Writing Committee interview the 2008 contest winners.

Hettie Jones & Charles Norman

Although much of my “prison” work is dark and tragic, I’m actually the class clown, and my humor is an important part of who I am. I have to be careful to suppress it in prison, though, for those who rule us are humorless, and easily offended, such tempting targets for mockery . . .[More]

Sarah White & Yvette Louisell

I sit and write in a frenzy, almost always late at night and sometimes so late that I have to write by the light of the hallway. (Lights out is at 11:30 p.m. Mon.-Fri. and 12:30 a.m. Sat. and Sun., but our doors don’t lock here. As long as I’m not bothering my roommate or whatever officer is on duty, I can crack my door open, sit on the floor, and write past lights out.) [More]

Ernest Rich

They don’t feed (us) much here at Pamlico. We seldom get meat at breakfast. They don’t always serve what is on menu. Eggs and grits. Eggs are not real. Grits are bland. Oatmeal don’t taste like oatmeal. They boil it too long to destroy all the vitamins. [More]

Malachi Ephraim

I awakened today around 5 a.m., in a better mood than usual. Lying on my left side, facing the cell door, I gazed at the prison gray walls and enjoyed the early morning light illuminating the cell block interior. [More]

Richard Parker

I decided I am going to put this booklet in the mail tonight. [More]

Every year hundreds of inmates from around the country submit poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and dramatic plays to PEN's Prison Writing Contest, one of the few outlets of free expression for the country's incarcerated. Manuscripts come to us in many forms: handwritten, typed, and written in the margins of legal documents.

The Prison Writing Committee is proud to announce the winners of the 2008 Prison Writing Contest.

>> Complete 2008 winners list

Prison Eulogies
by Yvette Louisell

The ones who died
never mattered much
except in here
where the stories never end . . .

[More]

Hook Island Traveller
by Chris Everly

In June, when the weather inland was fit for travel, I drove with my family to Hook Island, New York in the Hamptons.  [More]

Check Out Day
by Michael Rothwell

There’s always a way out of prison, any prison, and it can be done right now, today. The authorities can’t stop you. [More]

Fighting the Ninja
by Charles P. Norman

Nowadays the showers are scary not from knives but from germs . . . catching those strolling unaware in flip-flops on a slippery stretch, skidding and cartwheeling, splashing onto their backsides into the mire. [More]

Metamorphosis
by Jodi L. Serino

How unique we are. We have been created in God’s image. Created to be able to recreate and procreate. But what does this really mean? [More]