(Writers biographies below)
(NEW YORK)—The Prison and Justice Writing Program at PEN America—among the oldest initiatives of its kind—today launches the Incarcerated Writers Bureau, a digital resource that will help make professional and creative opportunities more accessible to writers in U.S. prisons. The website features information for publishers, literary agents, and journalists seeking to work with incarcerated writers, a searchable roster of featured writers, and a database for publishers and media platforms to submit opportunities for writers working from prison.
Developed with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Incarcerated Writers Bureau is a catalyst for change in helping to make the literary community more inclusive of writers experiencing incarceration. Historically, censorship and vague communication policies established by prisons and jails have been barriers for incarcerated writers to launch and sustain their writing careers. The digital experience was designed, imagined, and developed by Zealous, a national initiative dedicated to reshaping public understanding through the perspectives, expertise, and stories of historically overlooked voices.
Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, co-interim CEO and chief program officer of Literary Programming, said: “Even when the publishing industry aims to be intentional about making space for the breath in diversity that exists in contemporary literature, one group that typically gets left behind are the writers who are incarcerated or impacted by the justice system. For too long, powerful storytellers in prison have been left out of publishing and writing opportunities due to the challenges of connecting with the wider world. The Incarcerated Writers Bureau joins a network of organizations and projects that have been working to break down those walls of separation through a more equitable practice.”
Industry professionals can expect substantive resources for how to contact and pay writers in prison, how to edit through digital and mailed correspondence, and the ethics of working with writers in prisons. Submitted opportunities are displayed on the website, and printed in a quarterly newsletter sent to writers involved in the Prison and Justice Writing Program. Profiles and information of select published writers are featured on the site—most of them affiliated with PEN America or previous recipients of the PEN Prison Writing Awards.
The 21 writers currently featured on the platform include: Christopher Blackwell (WA), Demetrius Buckley (MI), Robert Caldwell-Kim (MI), Curtis Dawkins (MI), Ivié Demolina (NY), P.M. Dunne (NY), Juan Moreno Haines (CA), Elizabeth Hawes (MN), Patrick Irving (ID), Jevon Jackson (WI), Spoon Jackson (CA), Catherine LaFleur (FL), John L. Lennon (NY), Eduardo “Echo” Martinez (FL), Lyle C. May (NC), Matthew Mendoza (TX), Justin Rovillos Monson (MI), Corey “Al-Ameen” Patterson (MA), Leonard Scovens (FL), Derek Trumbo (KY), and George T. Wilkerson (NC).
In addition to their success in the PEN Prison Writing Awards, these writers have been featured in national publications such as The New York Times and Harper’s Bazaar, as well as respected literary journeys including Poetry and Hayden’s Ferry Review. Nearly half have authored or co-authored at least one published book, and have been honored by such initiatives as the Stillwater Awards and the Writing Freedom Fellowship. Curtis Dawkins, Elizabeth Hawes, Spoon Jackson, Justin Rovillos Monson, and Derek Trumbo, Jr. are featured contributors in The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting a Writer’s Life in Prison (Haymarket Books, 2022)—an updated edition of PEN America’s Prison Writing Handbook that circulated in prison for decades.
Featured writer P.M. Dunne, who has won multiple PEN Prison Writing Awards and has contributed to numerous publications, said: “The Incarcerated Writers Bureau helps to bridge the gap that has long existed between incarcerated writers and publishers. I’m honored to partner with organizations like PEN America to help shift the incorrect narrative that incarcerated writers aren’t talented or professional enough to make it in the publishing world. The literary canon bursts with human beings who penned masterpieces while locked in cages. We’re here to continue that good work, to enrich society on both sides of the wall.”
For more than five decades, PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing program has amplified the work of thousands of incarcerated writers in the United States. By providing resources, mentorship, and audiences outside prison walls, the program helps these writers to join and enrich the broader literary community. The PEN Prison Writing Awards annually recognize talented writers in poetry, fiction, essay, memoir and drama. Winners of the awards are offered enrollment in the correspondence-based PEN Prison Writing Mentorship Program, where they work with an assigned volunteer mentor on their craft and individual writing goals.
About PEN America
PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free 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. Learn more at pen.org.
Contact: Suzanne Trimel, [email protected], 201-247-5057
IWB Writer-Supplied Bios
Christopher William Blackwell is serving a 45-year prison sentence in Washington state. He is an award-winning journalist and co-founder of Look2Justice, an organization that provides civic education to system-impacted communities and strives to pass sentence and policy reform legislation. Blackwell also co-founded the Writers’ Development Group with Empowerment Avenue, a group that works to empower incarcerated voices to be published in mainstream media. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Huff Post, The Boston Globe, Insider and many more outlets. You can follow and get in touch with him on Twitter at @chriswblackwell, and on his website: https://christopher-blackwell.com.
Demetrius Buckley is the author of Here is Home (O, Miami), winner of the 2021 Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ghost Story, Scalawag, Arkara, The Offing, Filter, RHINO, and Michigan Quarterly Review, where he won the 2020 Page Davidson Clayton Prize for Emerging Poets.
Curtis Dawkins is the author of The Graybar Hotel (Scribner 2017), a critically-acclaimed, debut collection of stories that was shortlisted for five prizes and translated into eight languages. In 2000, he received an MFA in fiction from Western Michigan University. Dawkins has contributed to Vice, Hudson Review, Hobart, Beloit Fiction Journal, and several others, as well as The Sentences that Create Us: Crafting a Writer’s Life in Prison. Currently incarcerated in Michigan’s semi-Arctic Upper Peninsula, he is serving a sentence of life without parole for a drug related homicide in 2004. When not writing, he’s waiting for Detroit Tigers baseball to begin, reading, or looking at the snow out his window.
Ivié DeMolina is a New York Puerto Rican, born and bred in East New York, Brooklyn. Ivié finally found her voice through art, music and poetry while incarcerated. She has been in prison for over 28 years now. Her works are featured with Harper’s Bazaar, HumansOfSanQuentin.org, NJ Reentry Corp., The Journal of Women and Criminal Justice (2nd & 3rd Editions), and others. When Ivié is not dallying with creating works, she’s playing with her kettlebell—StrongFirst—training. Her present project is #CallsComingFromInsideTheHouse: A Collection of Writings on Being Granted Clemency with an Ankle Bracelet and House Arrest, From the Women Who Wear the Shoes.
P.M. Dunne is an award-winning writer from Queens, New York. His poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared, most recently, in Exchange (Columbia University), Iron City Magazine, Tacenda Magazine, Bridges (Brooklyn Public Library), Medium (The Operating System), Blue Unicorn, and with the Prison Journalism Project. He is the proud recipient of a PEN Writing For Justice Fellowship and other honors. He was released in 2025, and has plans to earn an MFA and start a small press for incarcerated writers and prison abolitionists.
Juan Moreno Haines is an incarcerated journalist, senior editor for San Quentin News, and contributor to Solitary Watch. Since 2015, he’s been a member of the Society of Professional Journalists, which in 2017 awarded him a Silver Heart for being a voice of the voiceless. In 2020, the California Newspaper Publishers Association (CPNA) awarded him First Place for Covid-19 coverage and Fifth Place for COVID-19 profiles. In 2021, CNPA awarded him Fourth Place for mental health coverage. PEN America and Marvel Cooke through ShadowProof have awarded him fellowships. He is supported by Type Investigations and Empowerment Avenue.
Elizabeth Hawes has worked for 25 years as a comic actor, and has produced variety shows and plays in the Twin Cities. She is the recipient of several PEN Prison Writing Awards, a 2019 journalist grant for the Solitary Confinement Reporting Project, the Fielding A. Dawson prize, and several Minnesota Broadsides. Most recently, she was awarded the Keeley Schenwar Memorial Essay Prize with the Truthout Center for Grassroots Journalism. Her work can be found in publications such as Vermont College of Fine Art’s Hunger Mountain, Columbia University’s Exchange Volume 1 and 2, the Vera Institute of Justice, The Journal for Women’s Health and Criminal Justice, Harper’s Bazaar, American Theatre Magazine, and Truthout.org
Patrick Irving is the author of the First Amend This! newsletter. He writes from within the Idaho prison system, often cramped behind his desk, on the starboard side of the toilet, not infrequently rubbing shoulders while his cellie is taking the throne. A proud member of the Prison Journalism Project, his writing has been published by the Idaho Law Review, The Harbinger, and The New York Times. The scope of his work can be viewed at: https://bookofirving82431.com/.
Jevon Jackson is a poet and writer out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His work has been featured in The ReSentencing Journal, Tacenda Literary Magazine, Oyez Review, and others. A PEN Prison Writing Award-winning poet and advocate for restorative justice, Jevon is currently working on YA fiction geared towards inner-city youth.
Spoon Jackson is a former radio producer at Uncuffed: Stories from Solano State Prison, a columnist for the Swedish newspaper Global Oxygen, and a frequent contributor to the Good Men Project. Jackson is an editor of The Book of Judith, and a contributor to The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting a Writers Life in Prison (Haymarket, 2023). Jackson has won four PEN Prison Writing Awards and has been featured in five documentary films.
BC Kim is a Korean-American writer, artist, inmate, and self-proclaimed pebble in the shoe of the prison industrial complex. His work has been featured on the Joe Rogan Experience, Prison Insider, the Shuylkill Valley Journal, and elsewhere. He is the creator and producer of the groundbreaking Notes From the Pen podcast and website, which are dedicated to the premise that expression is a fundamental human right, as well as the purest form of rebellion.
Catherine LaFleur is the 2023-2024 Luis Angel Hernandez Poet Laureate for Exchange for Change and O, Miami. Her poem, “Gardener’s Memory,” won a PEN America Award and “The Equation” won a USC Dornsife prize in 2022. She is a frequent contributor to Prisoner Express. Catherine plays the piano and the dulcimer.
John J. Lennon is a prison journalist and a contributing editor at Esquire. He’s currently on his 22nd year of a 28 years-to-life sentence for selling drugs and murder at Sullivan Correctional Facility in New York. When he got locked up, he had a ninth-grade education. A creative writing workshop in Attica sparked his prolific career in journalism, and his first essay was published in The Atlantic in 2013. In 2014, “Dying in Attica,” was the inaugural essay for The Marshall Project. Lennon has written for the New York Review of Books, New York Magazine, Men’s Health, Sports Illustrated, VICE, and regularly appears in the New York Times. His 2018 Esquire story, “This Place is Crazy,” was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing and anthologized in the 2019 Best American Magazine Writing. Later, his piece, “The Apology Letter,” was one of the three features in the Washington Post Magazine’s special prison issue, which won the 2020 National Magazine Award. He’s been profiled in LitHub, The Atlantic, and the Columbia Journalism Review. His first book, The Tragedy of True Crime, will be published in 2024 by Celadon Books, an imprint of Macmillan.
Eduardo “Echo” Martinez is an artist of life, using his paintbrush imagination to show reality from his perspective to people’s views. Born, raised and incarcerated in Miami, Florida, Eduardo is the first Luis Hernandez Prison Poet Laureate with Exchange for Change and O, Miami, and lives the change that he desires to see in others. The veracity of his lyrics and writings are intended to make an honest person start doing more to reform the prison system. His chapbook, These Words Are Fugitives, was published in 2022. Other work can be found in Cuban Counterpoints, Scalawag, Don’t Shake the Spoon (volumes 1 and 2), Be Kindr, and Miami Herald, as well as with Exchange for Change, PEN America, PBS and CBS.
Lyle C. May is a journalist and public speaker whose work spans most topics in the criminal legal system, countering misinformation and enhancing public understanding of their responsibility for the incarcerated. His writing can be found on Scalawag, America Magazine, Meal Magazine, Copper Nickel, The Intercept, Inside Higher Ed, Perspectives on Politics, and other publications. His Anthology Witness: An Insider’s Narrative of the Carceral State, is forthcoming from Haymarket Books in the Fall of 2023. When not writing Lyle is working on his bachelor’s in Criminal Justice Administration through Ohio University. He regularly guest lectures at universities, high schools, conferences, on podcasts, and for church groups. A full resume of May’s work can be found on: lylecmay.com.
Matthew Mendoza is an associate editor at Evening Street Review. His plays have been performed in NYC as part of the Brooklyn Book Festival and Nylon Fusion/Voices Inside. The Open-Door Playhouse performance podcast of What’s Prison Like? was nominated for a Webby Award. He is in prison in Texas.
Justin Rovillos Monson is a Filipino-American poet and writer currently serving a sentence in the Michigan Department of Corrections, from which he hopes to be released in 2027. His work has appeared in Poetry, Catapult, the Rumpus, Logic, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and elsewhere. His first collection of poetry, American Inmate, will be released by Haymarket Books in 2024.
Corey “Al-Ameen” Patterson is Chairman of the African American Coalition Committee (AACC). An incarcerated manager, research and legislative organizer for Democracy Behind Bars Coalition (DBBC), he helped draft and organize around an act to protect the voting rights of eligible incarcerated voters which passed via the 2022 Votes Act. In 2020, his essay, “An Act Increasing Voter Registration and Participation,” was published in What We Know, and in 2022, Democracy Docket featured an op-ed by him titled “I was Unconstitutionally Disenfranchised in Jail.” After the death of George Floyd, he organized with AACC around the passage of a special legislative commission which studied the role of structural racism in Massachusetts correctional facilities. He earned a BLS from Boston University in 2022, and is serving a 15 years-to-life sentence.
Leonard Scovens, an incarcerated LGBTQ+ activist and award-winning author, is working on a novel exploring queer gangbanging culture in American prisons. A 2021 PEN America Writing for Justice Fellow, Scovens can be seen in the documentaries HUMAN, Another Justice, and The Other Way. Xer award winning book, WIldflowers in the Median, has been translated into Portuguese and French, and adapted into plays that have toured the Southeastern U.S. and Switzerland. Scovens is the co-founder of Achieve Higher Ground, a non-profit providing safe spaces where people impacted by trauma can heal. Xer books can be found at rustedearthproductions.com
Derek R. Trumbo, Sr., a multiple-time PEN Prison Writing Award winner, is an essayist, playwright, and author whose writing has been featured in The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting A Writer’s Life in Prison (Haymarket Books, 2022), Vera Institute of Justice’s The Human Toil of Jail project, and Tacenda Literary Magazine. His plays have won or placed in the top 3 at the Kentucky Theatre Association Roots of the Bluegrass New Plays Festival three years running. A Madeline L’Engle/Rahman Mentorship Award-winning essayist, Trumbo mentored, instructed, and facilitated writing circles while he was incarcerated. He was released in 2025 and continues to publish his column, “Never eat the candy on the pillow,” with Prism Reports.
George T. Wilkerson is an award-winning poet, writer, and artist on North Carolina’s death row. He is the author of Interface (BleakHouse Publishing, 2023) and Bone Orchard: Reflections on Life after Sentence of Death (BleakHouse Publishing), co-author of Inside: Voices from Death Row (Scuppernong Editions) and Beneath Our Numbers (Walk In Those Shoes), and editor of Compassion, a newsletter by and for incarcerated individuals. A four-time PEN award winner, Wilkerson loves playing basketball, listening to 90s hip-hop, and eating Fruity Pebbles. katbodrie.com/georgewilkerson