I Work as a Lead Man
Paul Wach was awarded an Honorable Mention in Nonfiction Essay in the 2022 Prison Writing Contest. Every year, hundreds of imprisoned people from around the country submit poetry, fiction, nonfiction,… More
From the Sidelines
Reginald Stephens was awarded an Honorable Mention in Nonfiction Essay in the 2022 Prison Writing Contest. Every year, hundreds of imprisoned people from around the country submit poetry, fiction, nonfiction,… More
Y’all Aint Here To Be Rehabilitated
Lyle May was awarded 3rd Place in Nonfiction Essay in the 2022 Prison Writing Contest. Every year, hundreds of imprisoned people from around the country submit poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and… More
Zhigwaajige’
“My mother then explained that the government had run a mass campaign and sterilized Indian people, and that one of the ways to do this was to label anyone… More
Why I Write
“I write because I have always written, because I want to write, because I don't want to write, because I don't know how to not write. Because, in the… More
Injuries Incompatible with Life
“This is my number, bro. Go to a meeting, get clean, and call me up sometime soon. I need a third baseman for our softball team, and you look… More
Tarkovsky by Countlight
“While in such a state, I had often pictured myself as some performance artist at the Guggenheim or somewhere: bleak, three-walled void of cell, its lotused, blanket-swaddled habitant.” More
Raw, Real, Uncensored
“The greatest consolation is that at the instant of death, all that was life ceases to matter; however good or bad, all the events of that life suddenly become… More
Little Gardens
“The older I get the more constricting I find the hetero mask to be. Committing this to paper is, then, something of a coming-out party.” More
Longing to be Heard
These dual essays were written by Benjamin Frandsen and Noelia Cerna, 2020 honorees for the PEN America/L’Engle-Rahman Prize for Mentorship. More