Unsealed: The Blood and Ink of the Prison Pen
Leo Cardez reflects on the limited resources available to incarcerated writers by explaining what it's like to use a "prison pen." More
On Bridgeworks Oregon’s “Prisons Have a Long Memory: Life Inside Oregon’s Oldest Prison”
Moira Marquis reviews Tracy D. Schlapp and Danny Wilson's "Prisons Have a Long Memory: Life Inside Oregon's Oldest Prison" (Bridgeworks Oregon, 2022). More
Where It Hurts: How Book Bans Restrict Access to Healthcare
Kwaneta Harris explains how book bans restrict people who are incarcerated from learning about their reproductive health and other areas of healthcare. More
The PEN Ten: An Interview with Monica Youn
The poem doesn’t live for me until it reaches the mind of the reader, as if the poem is a musical composition and the reader is both the musician… More
The PEN Ten: An Interview with De’Shawn Charles Winslow
I wanted to show what lengths people would go to just to conceal truths: a child’s queerness, an addiction, hypocrisy. More
Educational Censorship Continues: The 2023 Legislative Sessions So Far
The early returns from the 2023 legislative sessions suggest that lawmakers’ fervor to censor and ban content from educational institutions has not abated. Far from it. More
The Speaking Archive: Words from the House of the Dead
Valentina Flores finds a 1971 anthology by incarcerated writers at Interference Archive, a community-based organization in Brooklyn, New York City. More
What’s Mildred Taylor Got to Do With It?: Race, Prison Book Bans, and the Power in Storytelling
In this essay on prison book bans, Moira Marquis uses "The 1619 Project" to explain how limiting access to Black history and culture is deleterious to people who are… More
Introducing “Unsealed:” Inside the Letters of PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Program
Jess Abolafia on the challenges of communication through prison walls via physical, handwritten mail. More
The PEN Ten: An Interview with Lamya H
Finding queer Muslim community taught me it was possible to live. More