PEN in the Community: California State Prison, Los Angeles County, Spring 2019

In Spring of 2019, PEN in the Community writers-in-residence program hosted an eight-week-long storytelling workshop at California State Prison, Los Angeles County. Instructed by Teaching Artist Dorothy Randall Gray. Excerpts of student work responding to the prompt of writing to a young person or younger self can be found below.

This PEN in the Community residency is generously supported by the California Arts Council.

A teacher and global activist, Dorothy Randall Gray is author of the bestseller Soul Between The Lines: Freeing Your Creative Spirit Through Writing (Avon/HarperCollins). Her other publications include Muse Blues, Woman, Fierce With Reality, Family, The Passion Collection, A Taste of Tamarinda, and her latest, Sharing The Same Sky. Dorothy’s passion for the creative inspired her to establish the Heartland Institute for Transformation, an outreach organization dedicated to utilizing the arts for global healing, social change, and personal empowerment. Under the Heartland umbrella she offered educational assistance to African schools, creativity workshops at juvenile detention facilities, Skid Row populations, post-graduate students and professional authors. A former NPR commentator, she is presently executive director of Women Writers & Artists Matrix, an association of kindred creative women dedicated to shifting the paradigm through words and images.