Note: Winners and Judges in the following states: CA, CO, GA, FL, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MN, NC, NJ, NY, OK, PA, SC, TN, TX, VA
(NEW YORK)— Thirty-three incarcerated writers from 20 states have been named winners of PEN America’s 2025 PEN Prison Writing Awards, among the oldest and most coveted of awards of this kind for writers in prisons. Administered by PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Program, this year’s judging panel included for the first time ever six formerly incarcerated writers who were previous recipients of the awards.
Prison and Justice Writing Program Director Malcolm Tariq said: “Engaging with former winners for the first time as judges was an incredibly special moment for the Prison and Justice Writing Program. It allowed us to extend the life cycle of writers’ involvement in the program while also supporting their writing careers, even as they return home. They offer their unique vantage point of understanding the conditions under which the submissions are created in prisons.”
The PEN Prison Writing Awards honor literary works with first, second, third and honorable mention prizes in each of five categories: poetry, fiction, essay, memoir, and drama. Two special awards, the Fielding A. Dawson Award for Promising Works and the Bell Chevigney Award for Women’s Nonfiction, are named in honor of founding members of the Prison Writing Committee. All winners are awarded cash prizes, publication in an annual anthology series, and enrollment in the PEN Prison Writing Mentorship Program. There were 35 prizes given; two people received awards in two categoes: Lawson Strickland won Second Place in Memoir and Drama. Todd Winkler won Second Place in Fiction and the Fielding A. Dawson Award for Promising Work in Drama.
The 2025 PEN Prison Writing Awards were judged by 23 members of PEN America’s Prison Writing Committee and six guest judges who were formerly incarcerated and have been involved in the Prison and Justice Writing Program, either as recipients of the PEN Prison Writing Awards, as a Writing for Justice Fellow, or as volunteer mentors in the Prison Writing Mentorship Program. The judging chairs were Prison Writing Committee members Ethan Bumas (drama), Katherine Hill (fiction), Grace Kearney (nonfiction), and Crystal Yeung (poetry). Guest judges who were formerly incarcerated included Brian Beals (Chicago, IL), Sterling Cunio, Jason Kahler (Clinton Township, MI), Arthur Longworth, Erik Tschekunow (Minneapolis, MN), and Louise Waakaaigan (Minneapolis, MN).
In December 2023, Brian Beals walked out of prison in Illinois after being exonerated for a 1988 shooting death he was wrongfully convicted of at age 22 when he was a college student. His family and, later, the Illinois Innocence Project at the University of Illinois Springfield spent more than three decades on a mission to prove Beals’ innocence. He was exonerated after 35 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
Beals received PEN Prison Writing Awards for his work in nonfiction and drama in 2020 and 2023. Beals, who was among the guest judges, said: “Learning my first submission was awarded an honorable mention and a writing mentor was a big boost to my confidence and motivated me to work harder. Years later, serving as a guest judge has been a special part of my re-entry journey. I hope my experience will inspire incarcerated creatives to see PEN America as a partner, not just a competition.”
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 contest is one of the earliest outlets of free expression for the country’s incarcerated population.
This year’s winners are incarcerated in California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.
The winners, (with first place winners’ self-provided bios), are as follows:
GENERAL AWARDS
FICTION
First Place: “The Garden House”
Amanda Webber (Homestead, Florida)PLACE
Amanda Webber is from South Florida. Previously a sourdough baker and fermentation chef, she currently works as a teacher and helps women prepare for reentry. Amanda holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Florida International University and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in psychology. “The Garden House” is her first publication.
Second Place: “Everything Must Go” (Todd Winkler)
Third Place: “Grounded” (Ken Meyers)
Honorable Mention: “Three Little Words” (Crystal Avilla)
Honorable Mention: “Fathers, Sons, and Bars” (PM Dunne)
Honorable Mention: “The Threadweaver” (Jacob Roswell)
POETRY
First Place: “The New Beginning”
J.A. Davis (Seagoville, Texas)
J.A. Davis is an incarcerated poet. His work has appeared with The Comstock Review, The Haight Ashbury Literary Review, and the University of Iowa Prison Writing Project. He co-hosts the podcast, Love in this Place, about relationships behind bars where love is verboten.
Second Place: “Of Love & Blindness” (Jonathan Scott)
Third Place: “Goya’s Goat Painting” by (Akiva Israel)
Honorable Mention: ”Sentences” (Peter Bin)
Honorable Mention: “The Verdict (A Pantoum)” (Paul Brown)
Honorable Mention: “De Profundis (at the Waffle House)” (Matthew Mendoza)
ESSAY
First Place: “The Worst Punishment They Got”
Richard Sean Gross (Collegeville, Pennsylvania)
Richard Sean Gross, 59, is serving two Death by Incarceration sentences. He is a student with the Villanova Program at SCI Phoenix in Pennsylvania, with a 3.76 GPA. He writes essays, poetry and sci-fi. His work can be found online at MinutesBeforeSix.com, prisonwriters.com. prisonwitness.org and PrisonsFoundation.org. A fan of classic rock, sudoku, history, and yoga, his dream is to write his way out of prison.
Second Place: “Dodging Bullets” (Rolf Rathmann)
Third Place: “Five Little Words” (Wes Lee)
Honorable Mention: “Council Meeting” (Kyle Bryant)
Honorable Mention: “Birds of a Felonious Feather” (Alex Friedmann)
Honorable Mention: “Victims (Without) Rights” (M. McMahon)
MEMOIR
First Place: “Last Rock”
JShawn Guess (Macon, Georgia)
JShawn Guess has spent the majority of his consecutive 35 years of incarceration writing for food and sanity. His works—published under a variety of pseudonyms—have appeared in newspapers, magazines, and Gritty Southern Christmas Anthology: A Collection of Short Stories. “Last Rock,” included in this anthology, began as writing on the wall of an isolation cell with fingers dipped in water. The hope then was that as the words evaporated, so would the memories. Failing that, the new hope is they live on to inspire ending barbarity within carceral systems.
Second Place: “Whitefish” (Lawson Strickland)
Third Place: “The Poop Predicament” (Christina Wang)
Honorable Mention: “Back Day/Fort Dix” (Tony Mammana)
Honorable Mention: “Intake” (Dion Mayer)
Honorable Mention: “Life on the Installments Plan: The Perils of Pre-teen Drug Use” (Craig Mobayed)
DRAMA
First Place: “Song of the Prison Gate”
Gary Farlow (Ridgeville, South Carolina)
Gary Farlow is the author of Prison-ese: A Survivors Guide to Prison Slang, Fragments of a Dream, and Porches, Puddin’ and Persimmons. He has won PEN Prison Writing Awards for both short fiction and drama, and an honorable mention citation for poetry. He is a graduate of Western Illinois University and the Thomas Jefferson College of Law at Heed University.
Second Place: “Losing Heart” (Lawson Strickland)
Third Place: “Just Another Day at the Zoo II” (Leo Cardez)
Honorable Mention: “Passing Pressure” (Jeanne Anne-Marie Bossier)
Honorable Mention: “Low Life: A Musical” (Fernando Rivas)
Honorable Mention: “Broken Promises” (Snow Vo)
SPECIAL AWARDS
Bell Chevigney Award in Women’s Nonfiction
“Dare I Ask for a Raise?”
Kimberly Cannon (Ocala, Florida)
Kimberly Cannon is a former teacher and entrepreneur from Pensacola, Florida. Her work has been published in Prism/Prison Vol. 1 (Chicago Books to Women in Prison) and with Prison Journalism Project. Currently incarcerated at Homestead Correctional Institution, she is still fighting for her freedom and to return home to her family. She asks that 22 years of incarceration be enough.
Fielding Dawson Prize for Promising Works
Fiction: “The Rascality of King Phoenix” Jeremy McLaughlin)
Poetry:“Origins” (John Hesselbein)
Nonfiction: “Gladiator Schools: An Origin Story” (Scott D. Culp)
Drama: “Exodus” (Todd Winkler)
About the Prison and Justice Writing Program 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.
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