Sophia Ramirez

Fellow, Prison and Justice Writing

Sophia Ramirez is a fellow with the Prison and Justice Writing Program at PEN America. She recently graduated from Wilton High School in Connecticut and will attend Yale University next fall. Passionate about writing and eager to support others in their own storytelling, she joined the Prison Creative Arts Project as a senior, reviewing the submitted poetry, fiction, and essays of incarcerated people. She is now taking a gap year to further explore and contribute to the ongoing conversation about criminal justice reform, art, and where those intersect. In her free time, she loves playing board games with her family, learning the harmonica, and writing short stories.


Articles by Sophia Ramirez

Wednesday June 15

Benevolent Terror: Dorothy E. Roberts on Reimagining the Child Welfare System

Sophia Ramirez reviews Dorothy E. Roberts’ new book Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World (Basic Books, 2022).

Thursday April 21

Necessary Unlearning: On Derecka Purnell’s ‘Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom’

Prison and Justice Writing Postgraduate Sophia Ramirez Fellow reviews Derecka Purnell’s “Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom.”

Monday November 15

Facing the Page: PEN America’s Prison Writing Program Takes on NaNoWriMo 2021

In our third year of collaboration with NaNoWriMo, we are supporting 15 incarcerated writers taking on the daunting challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel in just 30 days.