Jess Abolafia

Jess Abolafia is the Prison and Justice Writing Program Assistant at PEN America. She graduated summa cum laude from The College of New Jersey with a BA in English and African-American Studies. Abolafia has also instructed a writing-workshop at the only women’s maximum-security prison in New Jersey, empowering incarcerated women to use writing as a tool of healing and liberation. She is currently working on several book projects with system-impacted individuals, including co-editing the memoir of an incarcerated woman sentenced to life in prison as a teenager, and compiling the paintings, drawings, and poems of an artist who found freedom through his artwork while on Death Row.