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. Presented here and on the Prison Writing home page is a selection from this year's winning entries.

>> Complete 2007 winners list

POETRY

Doing Time
by Steven Bulleit

Sunday evening Mom and Dad unwind on the couch, / her full black hair lays against Dad’s shoulder. / The iconic stopwatch fills the screen, the second hand / sweeps north, folding its final ticks into silence. [More]

Fried Mushrooms
by Yvette M. Louisell

Days of Our Lives
by Jah Chemistry


MEMOIR

Just Another Death
by Christina MacNaughton

I sit on my bunk as the minutes tick by. The count should have cleared over half an hour ago. Something’s up. In a place where timing and routine and schedule are the axis upon which the world revolves, remaining locked for so long past the standard count time sends Morse code through the heart of every inmate. [More]

A Family's Ties
by Thomas M. Fox

Fair Well
by George Hughes


FICTION

Confessions of a Jack-Off Artist
by Clifford Barnes

I like cocaine. No, I love it. It can be pure or stepped on with Inositol, B.C. Powder, or Equal. I’ll cook it up, draw it into the rig, and shoot it. I love bumpin’ coke because I get a feeling like when I was twelve and skeeted for the first time, except the rush is ten-times more intense and lasts about fifteen to twenty minutes. [More]

The Seventh Sense
by Michael McLean

Gumbo
by Charles Huckelbury


NONFICTION

Feeling(s) Cheated
by J.E. Wantz

From 1995 to 2005 I was on Paxil, a medication that, ostensibly, was to help me in the areas of depression and obsessive compulsive thinking. As I look back on the role that this medication has played in my life for the last 10 years I begin to wonder. [More]

The Seeds of Jasper Hate
by William Steed Kelley

Convicts and Communities
by Jorge A. Renaud


DRAMA

A Time to Forget
by Keith Sanders

Turds
by Eugene Williams

Horizon’s Edge
by Charles W. Angell II

>> Complete 2007 winners list