When: Monday, October 20
Where: Kellen Auditorium, Parsons School of Design: 66 5th Ave., between 11th & 12th Streets
What time: 8 p.m.

With: Breyten Breytenbach,  Suheir Hammad, Francine Prose, Susan Kuklin, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Wesley Stace, and other special guests

Tickets are $50, and include post-event wine and reception.
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All proceeds will go to PEN's Prison Writing Program.

On October 20th, PEN will hold its first-ever Prison Writing Gala, a benefit for PEN’s 37 year-old Prison Writing Program. Poets Breyten Breytenbach and Suheir Hammad, fiction writers Colum McCann and Wesley Stace, and children’s book writer Susan Kuklin, and nonfiction writer Adrian Nicole LeBlanc read the prize-winning stories and poems written by the writers who participate in the Prison Writing Program.

Since 1971, PEN's Prison Writing Program has sponsored an annual writing contest, published free handbooks for prisoners, provided one-on-one mentoring  to inmates whose writing shows merit or promise, conducted workshops for former inmates, and sought to get inmates' work to the public through literary publications and readings.

All of the proceeds from the night will go towards PEN's Prison Writing program, which works to provide a place for inmates to express themselves freely with paper and pen and to encourage the use of the written word as not only a legitimate, but an essential, expression of power.

$50 tickets include a wine-and-cheese reception.

>> Buy tickets now