PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing program (PJW) is a successful program that has supported the freedom to write inside U.S. prisons for a half century.
Founded in the wake of the 1971 Attica prison uprising, PJW has facilitated the work of writers who are creating while incarcerated and brought their voices to the literary community and countless readers across the country. The program encompasses mentorships between established writers on the outside and writers in prison. The program also includes an annual contest spotlighting writing produced in prisons nationwide, a published print anthology of writers awarded in the contest, and public events. In recent years, the program expanded to include work to bring the writings by and about incarcerated people into public discourse through publication in media outlets and original research reports on restrictions on free expression written with contributions from incarcerated writers such as last year’s Reading Between the Bars.
We are deeply committed to the justice impacted writers we serve, who live and work from prisons across the United States and are the heart of our program. We continue to evolve our internal processes to best support these communities of writers given often obfuscatory and fast-changing policies and regulations in prisons. Where we have fallen short in relation to individuals taking part in our programs, for example in verifying their receipt of funds, we have owned up to our shortcomings, apologized to those affected, and implemented safeguards to ensure the efficacy of our ongoing work. We want to respond to some misleading and false accusations in recent articles and in an open letter directed to PJW by providing a clearer view of the program and its work.
PEN America expanded the PJW program with the help of generous grants.
With support from the Agnes Gund Art for Justice Fund in 2018, PEN America was able to hire a director and program manager, the first two paid full-time staff members for a program that had, for decades, relied exclusively on part-time staff, volunteers, fellows, and interns. The Art for Justice Fund sunsetted in 2023. In 2021, we pursued and obtained a $1.5 million grant from a private foundation. In recent years PJW has had a staff of approximately 3-5.
In our application for our 2021 grant, we provided a detailed budget earmarking funds for specific activities, including the creation and distribution of a foundational resource, The Sentences that Create Us; the development of an Incarcerated Writers Bureau (IWB); and the creation of additional staff positions to support these programs. With additional staff, PJW was able to manage the large volume of physical mail to and from prisons, manage editorial initiatives, and manage the distribution of Sentences and the creation of a related curriculum known as Freewrite. Stipends were given to justice-impacted individuals and other justice-oriented organizations who helped develop curriculum for Sentences. Throughout the implementation of this program, PEN America has worked with anti-carceral partner organizations, formerly incarcerated writers who have served as paid advisors to the program, a consultant who was a former Bureau of Prisons staff, and others with relevant first-hand experience.
PEN America team members are in consistent contact with the foundation program officers, and the funder has expressed no concerns about the grant’s administration: grant expenditures were mapped out in our proposal and we have submitted detailed reports, both programmatic and financial, annually. Conference and convening participation, including associated costs, is included in the grant budget, but the hosting of a conference or gala was not discussed.
PEN America pays incarcerated writers for their work.
Every year, about 30 writers are awarded monetary prizes from the PEN Prison Writing Awards. Contest winners receive prizes of $250, $150, $100, and $25 for first, second, and third place and honorable mention, respectively, in each of the following categories: poetry, fiction, drama, nonfiction, and memoir, and publication as part of the prize. Special awards are also given. Recently, it came to our attention that six writers had not received checks sent in the mail during the pandemic from 2020 to 2022. We publicly apologized and accepted full responsibility for this oversight, and regret not following up at the time to confirm that all writers received their money. We have since privately apologized to each of these writers and increased their payments in acknowledgment of this long delay. We can confirm they have all now received the money. The six outstanding payments were out of a total of 94 payments issued during 2020-2022.
As a long-term course correction, PJW created an internal audit system to ensure all payments are received by writers themselves or by a designated recipient on the outside, since many prisons do not allow incarcerated individuals to be paid directly. We detailed some of the systemic barriers of the carceral system to paying incarcerated writers in this update on the program.
PJW has also focused on working with previously and currently incarcerated individuals in the role of paid consultants. When partnering with other justice arts organizations, we have also looked for ways within the parameters of the grant to ensure they are compensated for their efforts.
PEN America has distributed nearly 50,000 copies of The Sentences That Create Us.
A foundational resource of the program is The Sentences that Create Us: Crafting a Writer’s Life in Prison (Haymarket Books: 2022), an updated and greatly expanded version of PEN America’s Handbook for Writers in Prison that was circulated inside of prisons for decades. Sentences includes essays from a number of leading authors including Reginald Dwayne Betts, Mitchell S. Jackson, and Piper Kerman. To date, nearly 50,000 copies of the book have been distributed in prisons, free of charge. A set of companion curricula was released this month, also free of charge, to nonprofits, college in prison programs, carceral staff, and volunteer prison book programs. The curricula were written by six authors and writing instructors, four of whom were previously incarcerated, and all whom were compensated.
Marketing and publicity for Sentences was developed with the goal of connecting readers and writers inside prisons with the resource, free of charge. Any success for Sentences—which features justice-impacted contributors who were paid for their work—is not for PEN America’s benefit, but for the thousands of people inside who have learned about writing and publishing from its pages.
The creation, promotion, and dissemination of Sentences are grant deliverables for the grant that funds the majority of the program. PJW continues to receive 15-25 requests each week from incarcerated people asking to be sent a copy of Sentences. Books are also ordered by colleges in prison programs, smaller nonprofits who teach creative writing in carceral facilities, and carceral staff. All of these copies are delivered for free. Given the myriad regulations and restrictions, that vary state to state, with mailing books to prisons, distribution has not always been seamless; we documented instances of censorship of Sentences in Florida and Michigan in our extensive report last fall on prison book bans, Reading Between the Bars: An In-Depth Look at Prison Censorship.
The proceeds from sales to the public go to support the Prison and Justice Writing program.
PEN America is launching an Incarcerated Writers Bureau to connect incarcerated writers to publishers.
The IWB will launch later this year to connect writers to publishers interested in working with writers who are in prison. The timeline for the IWB was adjusted due to staff transitions. We have included feedback from incarcerated writers involved in the project and we incorporated this information into the development of the digital resource that will support the program.
The Prison and Justice Writing Program does not claim to officially represent any writer as an agent and does not accept money from writers for their work. The purpose of IWB is to connect writers to publishing opportunities directly, so that PEN America is removed from being a go-between for publishers interested in working with writers who are in prison.
PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Mentorship Program forges connections for writers.
The PEN Prison Writing Mentorship Program has been a pillar of the Prison and Justice Writing Program for nearly 50 years. Separated from the outside world, incarcerated writers face unique challenges to their emergence and careers as writers, journalists, and artists with valuable contributions. The PEN Prison Writing Mentorship Program aims to fill this gap by matching an incarcerated writer with a writer on the outside who has volunteered to read, respond, and suggest edits to submitted work.
Through these pairings, writers receive feedback on new or existing work, support with crafting a writing practice and process, and, most importantly, a tether to literary communities outside prison walls. These exchanges are designed to be connective experiences, where reciprocal learning occurs between mentees and mentors.
Management of the Mentorship Program has included establishing numerous mentorship pairings, facilitating flexible communication methods, and expanding training materials including a more robust toolkit and virtual education sessions. You can read more about the program here.
PEN America’s approach to abolition.
The purpose of PJW is to empower and uplift the voices of incarcerated writers. While abolition is an important cause, PEN America’s mission is based in free expression. While there is some overlap between our work and aspects of abolitionist vision, the two are materially different arenas of advocacy, and abolition work broadly is outside of PEN’s expertise or mission.
Learn more about PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Program and get involved here.