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.

Free copies of the Handbook are available to those currently incarcerated. They may also be purchased on behalf of others.

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 works 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 2011 Prison Writing Contest.

>> See complete 2011 winners list

Chatat
by Jonathan C Rosenbloom

There, in the rolling temple beneath the city streets, with the industrial harmony of heat, friction, and steel wailing in his ears like a cantor’s ululating prayer, the pounding, rocking rhythm of the train became a syncopated psalmic chant and Mordecai felt closer to God than he did swaying in prayer in the synagogue, the Torah scrolls laid open on the Bima close enough to touch. [More]

Healing Bin Laden
by Christopher Zoukis

You are letting your imagination carry you away. Funny feelings are easily remedied—it’s called Pepto Bismol. [More]

The Years In Between
by Jose L Di Lenola

I approached the tree, haltingly, feet heavy on hot pavement, and soothed my hands across its flesh, plucked leaves from lower branches. The gritty texture pulsed with life. In a place where everything was smooth stone and steel, the sensation was electric. [More]

Black Settlement Photo: Circa 1867
by Mike Owens

Southern dust clings to everyone, as if cursed
Earth itself were lusting to reclaim chattel. [More]

Silent Chatter
by Cary Lynn Nichols

Manic missives from deep space? Creepy crawlies through some rupture in the fragile membrane of reality?

One thing seemed certain. Wherever the source, it must be crowded there. [More]

Hell’s Kitchen
by Thomas Bartlett Whitaker

"Ay, Tomas, Tomas … you always say the nicest things to me when I am holding a 16-inch knife." [More]