Writing Inside, Writing Outside

April 30, 2010 | Elebash Recital Hall, CUNY Graduate Center | NYC

With Anthony Cardenales, Piper Kerman, and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc; moderated by Jackson Taylor

Co-sponsored by the Martin E. Segal Theatre, The Graduate Center, CUNY, and the PEN Prison Writing Program

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To the average person, the daily life behind prison walls is an invisible world. Writing about the everyday experiences of life from inside this system closed to the general public comes with as many challenges as writing about the experience outside. Piper Kerman, who documented the thirteen months she spent in prison in Orange is the New Black, is joined by journalist Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, author of the award-winning Random Family, which charts the lives of a community in the South Bronx, and by Anthony Cardenales, one of LeBlanc’s subjects. These three writers discuss their work and how the polarities of documenting and living the prison experience affected their writing.

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