A panel of tremendous writers and actors, including Lili Taylor, Nick Flynn, Touré, and Bryonn Bain, for read moving, award-winning prose and poetry from the PEN Prison Writing Contest. Proceeds from the event help ensure that PEN’s Prison Writing Program continues to promote the restorative and rehabilitative power of writing by providing hundreds of inmates with skilled writing teachers, free Handbooks for Writers in Prison, and a forum where inmates are encouraged to use the written word.

This event featured a special reading of poems and prose by incarcerated men and women from prisons that include: El Paso, Texas; Florence, Colorado; Ft Leavenworth, Kansas; Honolulu, Hawaii; Lexington, Kentucky; Montgomery, Alabama; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Ossining, New York; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Riker’s Island, New York; Sacramento, California; Salt Lake City, Utah; San Diego, California; Seattle, Washington; Tallahassee, Florida; Terre Haute, Indiana; Tucson, Arizona, and Washington, DC.