prison
-
Imperiled Across Both the Deep and Immediate Past
At the Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates unflinchingly analyzes and condemns the history of mass incarceration in America and its disproportionately devastating effect on black families: The blacks incarcerated in this country are not like the majority of Americans. They do not…
-
Books That Save Lives
For the Guardian, Erwin James reflects on his experience reading while in prison, and how books like David Levering’s Prisoners of Honor reshaped his life: I was without skills or abilities, but I could read. I’m sure the six books a week I was…
-
The Rumpus Interview with Ottessa Moshfegh
Ottessa Moshfegh discusses her first full-length novel, Eileen, betrayal, self-aware narrators, and the catalytic properties of friendship.
-
Conversations with Literary Ex-Cons: Jack Gantos
Jack Gantos discusses the sense of “delusional invincibility” he had in 1970s New York that led him to prison—and then on to a career as an award-winning children’s book author.
-
Weekly Geekery
Shame. The Internet. Monica Lewinsky. You spend hours killing people, but you don’t feel guilty. So much data. So few uses. All your stories in one little app. Reimagining incarceration. Your annoying Facebook friends have something to tell you.
-
Prison Rehabilitation
We’ve been thoroughly trained to not have empathy for people who’ve been convicted of violent offenses—even though that could mean many things, and I believe all of us have the capacity to do violence. People have also been trained to…
-
Suffering for Our Entertainment
Piper Kerman, author of the memoir Orange is the New Black, is a vocal spokesperson for the rights of prisoners. But, asks April Bernard on the New York Review of Books blog, does the successful Netflix show that is based on…
-
Writing in Prison
Drugs and petty crime landed Daniel Genis in prison for ten years. He spent his term reading and working on his three-hundred page novel—but only after dropping $375 on a clear plastic typewriter, the only model he was allowed. Genis…
-
The New York Comics & Picture-Story Symposium: Jeffrey Greene and the Prison Arts Program
The New York Comics & Picture-Story Symposium is a weekly forum for discussing the tradition and future of text/image work. Open to the public, it meets Tuesday nights from 7-9 p.m. EST in New York City.
-
UK Prisoners Denied Books
MobyLives reports that British prisons have banned books sent as gifts, a right even allowed in notorious Guantanamo Bay. Many British authors have criticized the new policy—an online petition has collected more than 20,000 signatures. Even prison staff seem to…
-
Conversations with Literary Ex-Cons: Mitchell S. Jackson
Cullen Thomas sits down with Mitchell S. Jackson to discuss The Residue Years, overlooked and ignored communities, studying with Gordon Lish, and writing dangerously.
