Over Half Century Old Prize Includes Annual Published Anthology
(NEW YORK)– Thirty-two incarcerated writers in 18 states have been named winners of PEN America’s 2024 PEN Prison Writing Awards, among the oldest and most coveted of awards of this kind, in five categories: poetry, fiction, essay, memoir and drama. The winners include several writers who submitted entries for the first time.
Two special categories include the Fielding A. Dawson Award, given to promising works, and the Bell Chevigney Award for Women’s Nonfiction. These special awards are named in honor of founding members of PEN America’s Prison Writing Committee.
Among the winners were some who have only recently started writing or submitting work. On his first time submitting for and winning a PEN Prison Writing Award, Albert Ramos—who is incarcerated and works as a field minister in the Texas Department of Corrections—said: “Sometimes I question whether my dedication to creative writing is worth the time and if it has any value or meaning. PEN America has helped me believe that the stories and drafts I write and type are worthy of sharing and sharpening for better effect…and that we should not be defined by our worst moments, but by our minds today, the artistic minds of this moment.”
For over 50 years, PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing program has championed the literary art of imprisoned writers from across the country. The program pairs incarcerated writers with mentors from PEN America’s writing community. The contest is one of the earliest outlets of free expression for the country’s incarcerated population.
Last year, hundreds of writers in prisons and jails across the country submitted works of literary art to be considered for the 2024 Prison Writing Contest Award, which includes both a monetary prize and publication in the seventh volume of the PEN Prison Writing Awards Anthology series, to be published in December 2024.
This year’s winners are incarcerated in CA, GA, FL, IA, KS, KY, LA, MN, NC, NM, NY, OK, OR, PA, TN, TX, WA, and WY.
The judging chairs for this year’s awards include PEN America’s Prison Writing Committee members Ethan Bumas, Deborah Clearman, Grace Kearney, and Crystal Yeung.
The winners, (with first place winners’ self-provided bios), are as follows:
GENERAL AWARDS
Poetry
First Place: “Caldo Verde”
Ken Meyers (Albion, PA)
Once an inveterate traveler, Ken Meyers has been incarcerated in Pennsylvania since 2010, where he works as a certified peer specialist and writes on a daisy wheel typewriter. He is the winner of the 2023 Fielding Dawson Prize for Poetry for “I Vaguely Remember What Flowers Are For,” which also appeared in Thank the Bloom: 2023 PEN Prison Writing Awards Anthology. His poetry has appeared in Iron City Magazine, and his short fiction in Atlantis and Absinthe Literary Review.
Second Place: “Kaleidoscope” (John Corley)
Third Place: “Hot Shot” (Michael Dewayne McCoy)
Honorable Mention: “Glitch” (Alex Friedman)
Honorable Mention: “Terminus” (Geneva Phillips)
Honorable Mention: “Prisoner on AER” (Chris Presfield)
Fiction
First Place: “Wait”
Lawson Strickland (Angola, LA)
Lawson Strickland, a native Virginian, joined the U.S. Army at the age of 17 and served from 1988 to 1992. Transferred from Germany to Ft. Polk, Louisiana, Strickland was honorably discharged and subsequently arrested, charged, and convicted of 1st degree murder stemming from a bank robbery, leaving behind his wife and daughter. Strickland is now in the 30th year of a life sentence at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. The first 23 years of that sentence were spent in solitary confinement where he wrote, read, and taught himself painting until being released to general population. In 2016, Strickland was awarded second place for Fiction in the PEN Prison Writing Contest for “September’s Last Day.” Since then, he has graduated from the prison’s Industrial Generator Vocational School, served as a Department of Corrections certified educational tutor, currently serves as a certified mentor conducting pre-release rehabilitation classes, and works full-time as a contributor for The Angolite, the prison’s criminal justice magazine.
Second Place: “Courage” (Robert Hitt)
Third Place: “Sanctuary Hill” (J.D. Frandsen)
Honorable Mention: “The Power of the Spork” (Linda T. Henning)
Honorable Mention: “Drunken Goatman” (Cody Reno)
Honorable Mention: “The Journal” (Matthew Feeney)
Essay
First Place: “Accusation Unfounded: The Promise of PREA, the Reality of Rape”
Ken Meyers (Albion, PA) Note bio above
Second Place: “The D.O.C.-M.F.A.” (Peter Nathaniel Malae)
Third Place: “Am I Sober?” (Victor Chunga)
Honorable Mention: “An Artist in Prison” (Jeanne Bossier)
Honorable Mention: “Servitude” (John Corley)
Honorable Mention: “The Difference” (Kenneth Andrus)
Memoir
First Place: “I Am Prepared to Die”
Edward Ji (Midway, TX)
Edward Ji has been serving a life sentence since he was 16. He writes dystopian sci-fi that leaves other inmates scratching their heads, and poems about the cats, bugs, and (occasionally) people he meets in prison.
Second Place: “Eulogy” (Elizabeth Hawes)
Third Place: “Scars of a Soul” (Donald Hoyt)
Honorable Mention: “Bed Rolls” (Albert Ramos)
Honorable Mention: “The 600-Pound Prisoner” (David Morrison)
Honorable Mention: “84 Days and Counting: The Plight of the Flightless” (Paula Grieve)
Drama
First Place: “Burn Book”
Sara G. Kielly (Bedford Hills, NY)
Sara G. Kielly was awarded a Ridgeway Reporting Grant from Solitary Watch in 2023. She is an investigative journalist, poet, and incarcerated member of Empowerment Avenue’s Writing for Liberation program. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Slate, The New York Amsterdam News, Spotlong Review, New York Focus, and Film Comment. She wrote the first iteration of this short script in her “Short Film Writing, Development, and Production” class in Marymount Manhattan College’s Bedford Hills College Program.
Second Place: “The Question” (Peter Nathaniel Malae)
Third Place: “Unpromised” (Aaron Flaherty)
Honorable Mention: “The Hanging Game” (John Quanrude)
Honorable Mention: “Urban Kingdom: For the Love of Money” (Tray “Deuce” Robinson)
Honorable Mention: “A Damn Fine Story” (Derek R. Trumbo, Sr.)
SPECIAL AWARDS
Bell Chevigney Award in Women’s Nonfiction
“Defiant Hope: Breathing Life into Carceral Death”
Pamela A. Smart (Bedford Hills, NY)
Pamela A. Smart has been incarcerated for 34 years. She earned a PhD in Biblical Studies, a Masters of Law, a Masters of Professional Studies, and a Master of Fine Arts in English LIterature. She is featured in the award-winning PBS documentary What I Want My Words to Do to You, a participatory action researcher for “Changing Minds: The Impact of College in a Maximum Security Prison.” Her poetry has been published in Exchange, Return to Sender, Beyond the Bars, and HUmans of San Quentin. She is the elected grievance representative for Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, where she works as an advocate for her peers. She is serving a life without parole sentence but maintains a defiant hope for change.
Fielding Dawson Prize
Poetry: “Pork Ribs” (R. “Ya’iyr” Carter)
Fiction: “Daddy’s Little Girl” (Jason Ray Bouchard)
Nonfiction: “State of Dormancy” (Michelle McCutchan)
Drama: “An Infernal Dialogue: Act 2” (Joshua Daniel Peterson)
This winter, the anthology of prison writings will be celebrated along with this year’s winning entries at the annual BREAK OUT event. More information is forthcoming.
About Prison and Justice Writing at PEN America
For five decades, PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing program has amplified the work of thousands of writers who are creating while incarcerated in the United States. By providing resources, mentorship, and audiences outside the walls, we help these writers to join and enrich the broader literary community. Committed to the freedom to write in U.S. prisons as a critical free expression issue of our time, we leverage the transformative possibilities of writing to raise public consciousness about the societal implications of mass incarceration and support the development of justice-involved literary talent.
The program includes the following initiatives:
The Sentences That Create Us: A road map for incarcerated people and their allies to have a thriving writing life behind bars–and shared beyond the walls–that draws on the unique insights of more than 50 contributors, most themselves justice-involved.
PEN Prison Writing Awards: one of the longest-running outlets of free expression for the country’s incarcerated population
PEN Prison Writing Mentorship Program: over 300 working writers and 300 incarcerated writers working together toward individualized literary goals and cultivating an engaged literary community through and behind the walls
Works of Justice Publications: an online series that features content connected to our department’s programming, reflecting on the relationship between writing and incarceration
About PEN America
PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible. To learn more visit PEN.org
Contact: Suzanne Trimel, [email protected], 201-247-5057