Named for the late acclaimed author Madeleine L’Engle and her 10-year written friendship with scholar, writer and former Black Party leader Ahmad Rahman, the PEN America/L’Engle Rahman Prize for Mentorship honors four mentor/mentee pairs in PEN America’s longstanding prison writing mentorship program, which links established writers with those currently incarcerated.
The prize was generously endowed by L’Engle’s family and memorializes L’Engle’s participation as one of the program’s very first mentors, along with Rahman’s extraordinary journey from serving 21 years in prison—framed in an FBI sting of the Panthers—to celebrated and beloved assistant professor of African and African-American History at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. The pair began writing in the early 1970s, establishing a rigorous working rapport that informed both of their works.
2024 Honorees
Mark Altenhofen lives in an exclusive gated community in Northern Minnesota surrounded by deer, eagles, Minnesota Vikings fans, and other wildlife. He is one of the editors of American Precariat: Parables of Exclusion (Coffee House Press, 2023). Altenhofen’s work has been honored twice by the PEN Prison Writing Awards: in 2018 for Honorable Mention in Nonfiction and in 2020 for First Place in Fiction. He is a committed student of the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop, and a proud member of the Moose Lake Writer’s Collective.
“From the first exchange with my mentor, I knew this experience would be special: he sent me one of his pieces for critique. Allow me to put this into perspective, please. In prison trust is a dangerous commodity. In the myriad of ways you can be hurt it all begins with trust. Guards are trained to mistrust us, volunteers are told to be wary of our intentions, and even our families may be leery of requests. Yet, this man offered me a portion of his deepest self. Writing, the best writing we do, offers a glimpse into our bared souls and my mentor trusted me to sift through a portion of his.”
Mark’s Mentor is a short story writer from California. His award-winning fiction has been featured in New Irish Writing. He prefers to remain anonymous.
“For those who haven’t had the pleasure of reading Mark’s work, he’s a writer who brings his entire self to the story. This doesn’t mean that his work is auto-fiction or memoir but rather, there’s a pulse of genuine expression that spreads across every page like lightning. Whether it’s Mark’s horror novel, creative non-fiction or enigmatic short about the US going to war with Canada, his work is impossible to put down. This is just one aspect of why this correspondence has been such a privilege.”
Jeanne Anne-Marie Bossier is an incarcerated transgender woman. As an author, she focuses on LGBTQ issues and stories in multiple genres and styles. Her ten-minute plays have been produced in Lexington, KY with Voices Inside, and her essays have earned PEN Prison Writing Awards.
“With that first letter Ash had made me feel comfortable and invited me to share a bit of my personal story with her. As I had hoped, there was genuine acceptance… Shared experiences reconnects us to an environment beyond the fences that confine not only our bodies, but in many ways, our hearts and minds…Giving me the freedom to write with an open heart and mind has helped me reach beyond the penitential barriers of steel and razor wire and of my own making. She has helped me find the confidence within myself to want to publish my work someday.”
Ash Holland is a freelance writer and editor based in Portland, Maine. A former academic and editorial director, Ash has a deep passion for writing and has been working with PEN for around seven years. Ash owns a traveling bookstore in Portland called The Lucky Fox Bookshop and spends her free time reading or hiking with her wife and pup.
“As members of the LGBTQ+ community, Jeanne and I had an affinity nearly right away. And while we’ve led different lives and claim different identities, it’s a deep joy to find someone safe to discuss such a core part of our lives with. I’m honored that Jeanne trusts me enough to share her reflections on this aspect of herself with me, and I’m grateful that she treats my identity with equal respect. Together, we’ve bonded over our love of writing and have made considerable progress on individual pieces, but this connection transcends the words on the page. My greatest hope is that as Jeanne navigates being a queer trans woman in a male prison, she knows she has someone on the outside who understands and values her and a safe place to explore these things in her writing.”
Jerry Metcalf (#251141) is a self-taught writer and artist who has spent the past 30 years behind bars. At the age of 20 he tracked down and shot the rapist responsible for the brutal sexual assault of a young teenaged girl. For that deplorable act of vengeful violence, Jerry is truly and deeply sorry. He trains service dogs for Paws With a Cause, donates time to helping those in prison who suffer from mental illness, and works hard each and every day towards destroying the modern day plantations we Americans call prisons. He’s also a contributing writer for The Marshall Project, Prison Writers, and the Prison Journalism Project.
If you wish to read some of his writing (fiction, poetry, nonfiction), view or purchase his art, buy one of his books, or listen to his podcast, you may do so by visiting him at Facebook.com/jerryametcalf.jr or X@JerryMetcalfJr1 or Instagram.com/jerryametcalf_artist.writer or Jamartgallery.etsy.com or YouTube Channel: XV3 The Red Zone, Live From the Plantation podcast.
“I’ve never had a writing community, though I’ve longed for one with all my being. Writing is my life. It’s the magic that keeps my heart pumping and my mind crisp on this corrupt, evil, and inept modern-day-plantation I currently (and for the past 29 years) call home…Then PEN America introduced Lily into my life. Right off she treated me like a normal human being. Screw the idea that I was some ignorant, less-than criminal locked in a cage. To Lily, I was a writer and was to be treated as such.”
Lily Brooks-Dalton is the bestselling author of The Light Pirate, which was the runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and a New York Times Editors’ Pick. Her previous novel, Good Morning, Midnight, was adapted into the film, The Midnight Sky, and her memoir, Motorcycles I’ve Loved, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award.
“I’ve never met anyone quite like Jerry. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that he is the most open-hearted person I know. At every turn, he fills our correspondence with passion, gratitude, determination, and hope. I’ve lost track of how many years he and I have written to one another, because it stopped feeling like a conversation with an expiration date a long time ago. I write to Jerry because I enjoy writing to Jerry. We have work to do, he and I: books to read and discuss, manuscripts to revise, queries to send.”
Geneva Phillips is a writer, artivist, and advocate for incarcerated women. Her work has been honored and included in four editions of the PEN Prison Writing Awards Anthology: 2018, 2022, 2023, and 2024. She is the author of the memoir Disappearing in Glimpses (Mongrel Empire Press 2020), excerpts of which were published in The Columbia: A Journal of Art and Literature. She is an inside volunteer and co-facilitates classes with Poetic Justice, a nationally recognized, award-winning nonprofit based in Oklahoma which helps incarcerated women find their voices, rediscover hope, and empowers them to change through writing in community.
“I soon realized that Cass believed in me more than I had ever believed in myself. Where I dreamed of one day becoming a writer, Cass believes wholeheartedly that I am, already, a writer. Even now, thinking about how deeply her belief has affected me, I struggle against tears. Not from some overly emotional sentiment, but overwhelmed by the sheer moving scope of the unbelievably positive and powerful force this writing relationship has been in my life.”
Cass Lewis is currently revising her creative nonfiction manuscript about mental health, mass incarceration, and the climate crisis, which was recently shortlisted for the SFWP Literary Awards. Excerpts of her manuscript have appeared in the Modern Love Tiny Love Stories column of The New York Times and The Mail section of The New Yorker. One of her personal essays is included in the anthology, No Contact: 28 Writers on Family Estrangement, edited by Jenny Bartoy, forthcoming from Catapult. More information can be found on CassandraLewis.com.
“Geneva inspired me to dig deeper in my own writing. To not take anything for granted. She inspired me to lean into the complexities, and the difficult philosophical questions about humanity. She showed me what is possible in writing when you allow yourself to write honestly – that vulnerability on the page is often what gives a nonfiction piece its strength and fire.”
