The room was quiet as David Fleenor, an individual who is currently incarcerated and was calling in, shared his experience participating at his facility’s writers’ workshop. “The clarity that I gain from writing,” he said via cellphone, “and that other people do also, is often the only way we can see a future where we can make a meaningful contribution to the outcome of our lives.”
At “Nurturing Writers Workshops in Prison,” a June 25 session at the American Library Association’s 2023 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Chicago, Fleenor shared the impact his writers’ workshop has had on his life as well as what his facility has gained from it: “An enduring writing community.” He was joined by moderator Moira Marquis, senior manager of the Freewrite Project at PEN America; Jerilynne Stewart, corrections librarian at State Correctional Institution at Mahanoy in Pennsylvania; and Sterling Cunio, a member of the Board of Directors in the organization Oregonians United to End Slavery who was formerly incarcerated and is now a mentor for writers’ workshops in prisons.
Stewart shared tips on how to run a writers’ workshop in a correctional facility, including ways to gain administrative approval, cut costs, garner interest, and encourage participation. She said her facility values giving inmates more activities when there aren’t enough programs or things to do, which made it easy for her to suggest the writers’ workshop in the library. “Not only is attending the group keeping [inmates] from being idle,” she said, “but they’re going to spend more time writing, and more time preparing for the group and what they’re going to share with them.”
Cunio advised librarians to create a safe environment for inmates to share their stories, while keeping in mind their roles. “Relationships are the foundation to every successful workshop that I participated in,” he said. “We could talk about our traumas, our struggles, our angers. I had a unique position where I had to be an advocate for my peers and also a go-between for administration and it could get tricky. Just be transparent about your boundaries and about your rules.”
Marquis also discussed the book The Sentences that Create Us: Crafting a Writer’s Life in Prison (Haymarket Books, 2022) and its accompanying writing guide, which teaches facilitators and librarians how to host writers’ workshops inside prisons.
She shared that PEN America is currently crafting a new, shorter curriculum for use, since the initial one was 100 pages and intimidating for incarcerated individuals. “We know that 40% of US adults are functionally illiterate, but it’s even higher inside,” she said. “The whole goal of instituting this, apart from providing freedom of expression for people, is that even if you cannot read anything else, you can read what you write. It is really a way into fostering greater literacy and self-determination.”
