Breakout: Voices From the Inside
Featuring award-winning prose and poetry from the 2015 PEN Prison Writing Contest, read by Khalil Cumberbatch, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Siri Hustvedt, Mitchell S. Jackson, Dawn Lundy Martin, Jeffrey Toobin,… More
PEN Applauds Experimental Funding for Inmate Education
Courses in education that build skill afford the only hope to change the course of direction for many caught in the downward spiral of these inhuman warehouses where people,… More
Justin Torres Reads “Letter to My Grandnephew” by Christopher Myers
In this excerpt from Breakout: Voices from the Inside—A Celebration of the PEN Prison Writing Program 2014, Justin Torres reads “Letter to My Grandnephew” by Christopher Myers. More
Eric Boyd Reads “Of Ash and Bone” by Robert Weaver
In this excerpt from Breakout: Voices from the Inside—A Celebration of the PEN Prison Writing Program 2014, Eric Boyd reads “Of Ash and Bone” by Robert Weaver. More
Prometheus: A Due Process Comedy
Argyle entered a convenience store shortly after three p.m. on the day in question. With a hand in his jacket pocket, he approached the clerk and demanded money. The… More
Cultivation
Burlap sack snaps in the windagain, the turn-rows grow longer.Along the way, days become bygones—dandelions dancing in the breeze.Knees dig into loose soil,toiling hands peel away a husk.Dusk meets… More
Air Pressure
I’ve seen wind go mad / in the skies of Arkansas; sticks / like straw, stuck through plumb... More
An Ordinary Prison
Peer into a prisonariumWe travel in a fish bowlPut your ear to the glass and hearA mumbled roar with shrill highlightsCardsharks hunched over scores and crumbsSlapping cards and grunting… More
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