Authors: Bell Gale Chevigny
Jones, M. A.: “An Overture” copyright© 1999 by M. A.Jones. First appeared in
Fortune News,
1980. “Prison Letter” copyright © 1999 by M. A. Jones, First appeared in
Fortune News,
1982. “Vivaldi on the Far Side of the Bars” copyright© 1999 by M. A.Jones. First appeared in
The Light from Another Country: Poetry from American Prisons
(Greenfield Review Press, 19S4). “To Those Still Waiting” copyright © 1999 by M. A. Jones.
Kelsey, Robert: “Suicide!” copyright© 1999 by Robert Kelsey. First appeared in
Fortune News,
1995.
Lewis, Reginald S.: “In the Big Yard” copyright © 1999 by Reginald S. Lewis. First appeared in
Fortune News,
1989.
Masters, Jarvis: “Recipe for Prison Primo” copyright © 1999 by Jarvis Masters. First appeared in
Finding Freedom: Writings from Death Row
by Jarvis Masters (Padma Publishing, 1997).
McLuckie, Lori Lynn: “Trina Marie” copyright© 1999 by Lori Lynn McLuckie. First appeared in
Fortune News,
1992.
Metzger, Diane Hamill: “The Manipulation Game: Doing Time in Pennsylvania” from
Crime
and Punishment: Inside Views,
edited by Robert Johnson and Hans Toch. Copyright © 1999 by Diane Hamill Metzger. Appears by permission of Roxbury Publishing Co., Los Angeles. “Uncle Adam” copyright© 1999 by Diane Hamill Metzger. First appeared in
Fortune News,
1985.
Montgomery, Vera: “solidarity with cataracts” copyright © 1999 by Vera Montgomery. Courtesy of Albert Montgomery. First appeared in the
Greenfield Review,
fall 1987.
Moriarty, Robert).: “Pilots in the War on Drugs” copyright© 1999 by Robert J. Mori arty. First appeared in
Fortune News,
1991.
Mulryan, Paul: “Eleven Days Under Siege” copyright © 1999 by Paul Mulryan. First appeared in Prison
Life,
October 1994.
Nolan, Patrick: “Old Man Motown” copyright © 1999 by Patrick Nolan,
Norman, Charles P.: “Pearl Got Stabbed!” copyright © 1999 by Charles P. Norman.
Norton, Judee: “Norton #59900” copyright© 1999 by Judee Norton. First appeared in
Fortune
News,
1993. “Arrival” copyright © 1999 by Judee Norton.
Orlando, William: “Dog Star Desperado” copyright © 1999 by William Orlando.
Rodriguez, Alejo Dao'ud: “Ignorance Is No Excuse for the Law” copyright © 1999 by Alejo Dao'ud Rodriguez.
Rosenboom, Daniel: “The Night the Owl Interrupted” copyright© 1999 by Daniel Roseboom,
Rosenberg, Susan: “Lee's Time” copyright © 1999 by Susan Rosenberg. First appeared in
Prison
Life,
October 1994.
Ross, Anthony: “Walker's Requiem” copyright © 1999 by Anthony Ross. First appeared in
Fortune News,
1996.
Rutan, Robert M.: “The Break” copyright © 1999 by Robert M. Rutan. Ruias, Jackie: “Easy to Kill” copyright© 1999 by Jackie Ruzas. First appeared in
Candles Bum
in Memory Town
(Segue Books, 1988). “Where or When” and “Ryan's Ruse” copyright © 1999 by Jackie Ruzas.
St, John, Paul: “Behind the Mirror's Face” copyright © 1999 by Paul St. John.
Saucier, Michael: “Cut Partner,” “Gun Guard,” and “Black Flag to the Rescue” copyright © 1999 by Michael Saucier.
Saunders, Barbara: “The Red Dress” and “After Lights Out” copyright © 1999 by Barbara Saunders.
Schillaci, Jon: “Americans” and “For Sam Manzie” copyright © 1999 by Jon Schillaci.
Sissler, Joseph E,: “I See Your Work” copyright© 1999 by Joseph E. Sissler.
Stratton, Richard: “Skyline Turkey” copyright © 1999 by Richard Stratton. First appeared in
Story,
1992.
Taber, David: “Diner at Midnight” and “The Film” copyright © 1999 by David Taber. Taylor, Jon Marc: “Pell Grants for Prisoners” copyright © 1999 by Jon Marc Taylor. First appeared in the
Nation,
January 25, 1993.
Waters, Easy: “Chronicling Sing Sing Prison” copyright © 1999 by William Eric Waters. Wise, J. L. Jr.: “No Brownstones, Just Alleyways and Corner Pockets Full” copyright © 1999 by j. L. Wise.
Wood, David: “Feathers on the Solar Wind” copyright © 1999 by David Wood.
Xenos, Dax: “Death of a Duke” copyright © 1999 by Dax Xenos, First appeared in
Fortune
News,
1985.
(Unless otherwise indicated, prizes mentioned below were awarded in the PEN Prison Writing Contest.)
William Aberg
(b.1957) grew up in Maryland, from where he fled to the Southwest to escape arrest for a series of drug-acquiring crimes. Caught and imprisoned in Arizona, he entered Richard Shelton's writers' workshop, which transformed his life. “Many of my poems are extreme icons of emotional exile: separation, hopelessness, needle and spoon. Others arise from humor or reverie, or a combination of the two. Ultimately, they arrive out of necessity.” He earned an A. A. degree from Pima College in Tucson. His first sentence, from 1979 to 1984, an era of revitalization in prison programming, contrasted sharply with his second (for possession of World War I rifles) from 1994 to 1997. “The deadness in the eyes, the psychic numbness, of prisoners and staff was appalling.”
“Reductions” won first prize in poetry in 1982.
The Listening Chamber,
published by the University of Arkansas Press, won the University of Arkansas Poetry Award. A Russophile and amateur photographer in the Washington D.C. area, Aberg played bass in local bands, and continues to write poems and short stories. He is currently living in a Maryland nursing home.
J. C. Amberchele was born in Philadelphia in 1940 and attended a Quaker school, then colleges in Pennsylvania and New York, before earning a B.A. in psychology. “A drug trafficker for fifteen years,” by his own account, he has served time in a Mexican federal prison as well as in Colorado and Minnesota. He began writing early in his sentence, borrowing instruction books from the prison library. “Writing began for me as a desire to be heard, to be accepted, but soon moved into a form of self-discovery that became mind-opening,” he says. With fellow prisoners in the Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility, he helped to start a literary magazine and writers' workshop, which, along with other programs, were canceled in 1992. After immersing himself in Christian mysticism and Buddhism, he discovered the “Headless Way,” developed by the British philosopher Douglass Harding.
Published in
Quarterly West, Writer's Forum, Blue Mesa, Portland Review,
and
Oasis,
Amberchele won three fiction prizes, for “The Ride” (1990), “Melody” (1992) and “Mel” 1993. These pieces and others became the novel
How to Lose
(2002), which was translated and published in France as
Le Prix a Payer.
His commitment to Douglas Harding's work is displayed in his two non-dual spirituality books.
The Light that I am
and
The Almighty Mackerel and His Holy Bootstraps.
“Born in St. Louis (1953â2002) and raised in New Mexico, I was passing through California when I shot someone during an eighty-dollar bungled burglary and found myself a permanent resident,”
Stephen Wayne Anderson
wrote from San Quentin's condemned row, where he was sent in 1981. “That residency grows short; my lease is coming due.” Having ignored education as a youth, he made up for it in prison. His favorites: Emerson, Dickinson, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Coleridge, and Stephen King. “I received a book whose footnotes were
all
in Latin and became thoroughly pissed off. I invested in a Latin course so as to read them. By the time I taught myself enough of the basics I no longer had the book which had caused my original motivation.”
“Conversation with the Dead” won first prize in poetry in 1990; “Friday Crabs” won second prize in poetry in 1991. “We carry imminent destruction with us constantly,” Anderson said. “We eat, sleep and breathe death.” But he also wrote, “A sentence of death made me realize the value of life, and of living.” And “As I walk to that greater darkness, I will go wearing chains. Their chains. Not mine.” When he received his execution date in 2002, his lawyers mounted a powerful clemency appeal, and members of PEN wrote letters on his behalf, to no avail. Anderson refused to see anyone in his last days so he could compose himself privately. The Captain who oversaw the row told the
Los Angeles Times
that Anderson walked to his death with remarkable dignity.
Scott Antworth (b.1965) was born and raised in Augusta, Maine. After serving four years in the army, he was arrested in 1987 and served time until 2003. While in prison, he earned a B.A. in social sciences from the University of Maine.
Antworth's “Lawn Sale of Truth” tied for third place in fiction in 1997. “The Tower Pig” took first prize in 1999, and “Shortimer's Sunrise” tied for second place in 2000. “I've been writing for as long as I can remember,” he says, “but only started getting serious at it a few years ago, when some wonderful guidance transformed what would otherwise have been empty time.” He names Hemingway, Paul Theroux, and Jaimee Wriston Colbert as having had the greatest impact on him. His work has appeared in Flying Horse and in two collectionsâ
Trapped Under the Ice
(1995) and
Frontiers of Justice
Vol. 2 (1998)âpublished by the Biddle Publishing Company.
Release in 2003 presented Antworth with an identity crisis. He had to “invent a life from ground zero.” He has held a number of jobs, “mostly working as a social worker or cook.” He currently works on “being worth a damn to others,” and is edging toward writing again. He considers himself “truly blessed” with “a wife I love very much and a dog that is my closest confidant.”
Jimmy Santiago Baca (b.1952) was born in Santa Fe to Chicano and “de-tribalized Apache” parents. His story is an emblematic tale of redemption in prisonâand literacy is the liberating force. Even when he was in the hole, he read Emily Dickinson and Pablo Neruda. Writing gave him “a place to stand for the first time in my life.”
His memoir,
A Place to Stand: The Making of a Poet,
describes a wrenching pilgrim's progress from loss, degradation, and crime, to literacy and spiritual self-discovery, which shares much with the
Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Writing, he claims, enabled him “to rise from a victim of a barbarous colonization to a man in control of his life.” Baca once said, “All of us who went to prison were lied to, and poetry is the only thing that didn't lie. Everything that is not a lie is poetry. In order to bring order to our world, we were forced to write. Writing was the only thing that could relieve the pain of betrayal, the only thing that filled the void of abandonment.”
In 1976 his poem, “Letters come to prison,” won an honorable mention. A few years later, with Denise Levertov's help, he published
Immigrants in Our Own Land.
In 1988 his novel in verse,
Martin, and Meditations on the South Valley,
received the Before Columbus American Book Award for poetry. For more than thirty years he has made his living by writing, and has authored more than a dozen volumes of poetry and prose at the time of this publication. His many awards include a Wallace Stevens Yale Poetry Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, the National Hispanic Heritage Award, the International Award, and he has been Champion of the International Poetry Slam.
For many years, he ran his own school for writers; his students stay in New Mexico for a year or more, and study writing with Baca while also working in the community, painting, landscaping, or teaching lit-eracy. In 2004 he launched Cedar Tree, a nonprofit literary organization designed to provide writing workshops, training, and outreach programs for at-risk youth, prisoners and ex-prisoners, and disadvantaged communities. Baca has three sons and has said that he helps support “about ten adopted children.” His son Gabriel is planning to make a documentary called
A Place to Stand.
Allison Blake (b.1947) was born and raised in Manhattan. Incarcerated for a white-collar crime, she began to write creatively for the first time in Hettie Jones' writing workshop at Bedford Hills. Her poem “Prisons of Our World” was published in
Aliens At The Border.
She also received her state legal research certificate, and later at Albion Correctional Facility, became the first inmate to teach the state legal research course; 90% of her students passed the state exam as compared with 33% previously. Her play “Jailhouse Lawyers,” born out of her own experiences, won third prize in drama in 1996. She published other poems in
Concrete Garden
and
A Muse to Follow
(National Library of Poetry, 1996). She now works for a lawyer as a paralegal and is involved in real estate development. Her impulse to write seeming to have expired with her sentence, she now makes digital art. She still lives with the man who stood by her while she did time. Allison Blake is a pen name.
Kathy Boudin (b.1943) was raised in New York by social activist parents, her mother a poet, her father a civil liberties lawyer. Graduating from Bryn Mawr in the 1960s, she commenced a life of social commitments, participating in movements for civil rights and against the Vietnam war. She co-wrote a welfare rights manual and a legal self-defense guide. Incarcerated in 1981 at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, she received a Masters in Literacy Education from Norwich University, Vermont.
Along with other women, Boudin created a program on long-distance parenting and published
Parenting from inside/out: Voices of mothers in prison.
She applied Paolo Freire's principle of learning by analysis and action
(fromJPedagogy of the Oppressed)
to the teaching of basic literacy. The AIDS Counseling and Education Project, initiated by incarcerated women in the community, resulted in
Breaking the Walls of Silence: Women and AIDS in a Maximum Security Prison,
a collaborative history with a manual that was widely distributed in prisons. After the Pell grants for prisoners were abolished, Boudin and other prisoners collaborated to engage private colleges and the Westchester community to construct a new college program inside the prison.