Prison Writing Award Winners: 2008-2009
Every year, hundreds of imprisoned writers from around the country submit poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and dramatic works to PEN America’s Prison Writing Contest, one of the few outlets of free… More
Prison Writing Award Winners: 2009-2010
Every year, hundreds of imprisoned writers from around the country submit poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and dramatic works to PEN America’s Prison Writing Contest, one of the few outlets of free… More
Prison Writing Award Winners: 2010-2011
Every year, hundreds of imprisoned writers from around the country submit poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and dramatic works to PEN America’s Prison Writing Contest, one of the few outlets of free… More
Prison Writing Award Winners: 2011-2012
Every year, hundreds of imprisoned writers from around the country submit poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and dramatic works to PEN America’s Prison Writing Contest, one of the few outlets of free… More
My Father’s Violin
...lying in the back of another old Chevy—a ‘50 model—I watched passing headlights pinwheel over the torn headliner, and thought of my father home in Pennsylvania, dreaming unimaginable dreams… More
Steve Champion, PEN Prison Writing Award Winner, Hunger Strikes in San Quentin
Steve Champion, a prize-winning writer in the PEN Prison Writing contest, has been on hunger strike in the Adjustment Center (solitary confinement) of San Quentin's death row since October… More
Bleak Housing & Black Americans
The United States seems not merely to tolerate but actually to revel in inflicting barbaric human degradation upon prisoners—not just for months or years, but for decades and lifetimes... More
Siddharta’s Loop
I been goin’ to the Jersey shore since I was a kid and ain’t never seen a condom or syringe wash upon the sand. More