White House witch hunts @VOANews reporter Steve Herman @W7VOA, more vindictive retaliation @PENamerica has documented toward journalists @WhiteHouse deems critical. Get updates on events, literary awards, free expression issues, and global news. What’s the most daring thing you’ve ever put into words? When a poem marinates and then gets published, and only a year or two or three later do I realize how suspect my thinking was in the poem. It wasn’t ready. I would ask that they start with the Constitution, followed by anything by Hannah Arendt. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 24, 2018 NEW YORK—Today, PEN America announced the inaugural Writing for Justice Fellowship cohort. These people need to be confronted with the existence of scientific fact and the damage their assault on reality has caused to the planet. That ought to keep them busy for a few years. A PEN Ten Interview with the 2018 Writing for Justice Fellows By: Caits Meissner January 24, 2019 The PEN Ten is PEN America’s biweekly interview series. Not with the pyrotechnics, but with something that grips you and won’t let you go. But writing is about failing, and so I don’t stress those failures, as much as I regret when I don’t catch it quick. Several prominent authors, including Zadie Smith, are scheduled to speak at the Writers Rebel climate justice demonstration in London this evening. And what I ended up doing was shortening the line, loosening the form, and ramping up the repetition even more. As a Native American thriller writer, I was heavily influenced by the author Louis Owens, who was one of the few Native writers to work in crime fiction. PEN America is offering justice writing fellowship [US] to the journalists who are interested in mass incarceration issues. Where is the line between inspiration and appropriation? I’d demand that they read The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter. He taught me how to do things with words I never thought possible, and he encouraged me to indulge my love of language. This week, PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Program Director Caits Meissner speaks to the 2018 Writing for Justice Fellows. This is easily my favorite prison memoir, because it shows that the intellect can be insulated from the trepanning god awfulness of this world. In the contemporary moment, under an administration openly committed white supremacy and its violent enforcement, it is even more crucial to hold reformist projects accountable to our collective vision of liberation, because history shows us that even “reformed” institutions can be bent to the purposes of domination. However, even after I was released, having a felony record seriously limited my employment and educational opportunities. While an education and a job may not seem directly related to the freedom of expression, I think they definitely are. Maybe the point isn’t that I wish I could take back the first version, but that I realized the first version should have never been published. She is truly the heroic pioneer in the act of writing for justice. This doesn’t mean that I haven’t been wildly inaccurate at times, because I have. How does your identity shape your writing? For me, it inhibited my ability to express myself not only to the world but also in my own mind. The first time I read Zaher’s poetic sequence I was floored by the amount of desire bursting from each fragment. I could give examples, but part of this is also about the ways in which my responses to my own poetry might not be the public’s response. For about 13 years I lied to people about my life. Will we write ourselves away from each other, or go through the struggle necessary to explore that landscape together? The most daring thing that I’ve ever put on paper is the truth about my life as a Mainline Mama. “I truly believe that writing can shift perspectives and enable connection between people who would probably never spend time together.”. In Harold Bloom’s The Anxiety of Influence, he argues that poets, again and again, engage in what he terms “creative correction,” or in other words, a willful revising of the work of one’s predecessor. Bloom references poets, but in my own work, which is prose, I often find myself pursuing a Bloomian “correction” of work that has inspired me. This was the first book that wasn’t assigned for school and that I bought with my own money as a teenager. When writing about social justice, you’ll have more than one main point. In this short piece, Baldwin argues that white people in the present are caught underneath the weight of our history and by our guilt, our denial of the real oppressiveness of white history, a history in which we are the perpetrators of genocide, exploitation, and expropriation; yet, one which we represent to ourselves as though we are the natural and inevitable inheritors of power and progress. The book is so much. I truly believe that writing can shift perspectives and enable connection between people who would probably never spend time together. His novel, The Sharpest Sight, is an overlooked masterpiece, both a murder mystery and a meditation on mixed-race identity. Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism by Derrick Bell. This is her autobiography, and while it’s a dense read, it illuminates the groundbreaking work she did amidst unimaginably difficult barriers and dangers to herself. This duality is mirrored as well in our status as dual citizens: members of our Native nations as well as of the United States. PEN America’s Writing for Justice Fellowship will commission six writers—emerging or established—to create written works of lasting merit that illuminate critical issues related to mass incarceration and catalyze public debate. Credibility is the mountain that every incarcerated author in America has to surmount if they are going to find a receptive audience. I feared how people would judge me not only for being in a relationship with an incarcerated person, but also for being a regular—I worried people would judge me for my commitment to keeping a family together every week by visiting the prison. Book won the PEN/Faulkner award. But one example, that isn’t about the things said in the poem, but the structure. 5. It was published and won a Pushcart. I don’t know. Writing for Justice Fellowship PEN America PEN America’s Writing for Justice Fellowship will commission six writers—emerging or established—to create written works of lasting merit that illuminate critical issues related to mass incarceration and catalyze public debate. So, Natives exist in a liminal space, and my work explores the dichotomy of being simultaneously Self and Other. The poems spoke to my grief in such a profound and constructive way, never too directly and never too obviously. Criminal Justice Essay Jeremy Hanes CJA/204 10 June2013 Erica Veljic In today’s society crime is increasing every day and the types of crime are changing. As insane as the political situation is in our country right now, I have a lot of faith that America is going to be okay. If what a writer produces is flat-out mimesis, they’re on the wrong side of the line. This week, PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Program Director Caits Meissner speaks to the 2018 Writing for Justice Fellows. Truth and fiction can both exist comfortably next to one another, so long as one is capable of recalling the function and purpose of each, and not to let the intersection blend too softly casual. Whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, isn’t the purpose of all writing to illuminate our common humanity? That said, I think the biggest obstacle we need to overcome—and that means all reaches of the spectrum—is this strange echo chamber of personal belief we often seem to find ourselves in. Baldwin carried a faith and clarity in his vision of America that has the ability to transcend the polemics of today’s politics just as much as those of his own era. This fellowship “aims to harness the power of writers and writing in bearing witness to the societal consequences of mass incarceration by capturing and sharing the stories of incarcerated individuals, their families, communities, and the wider impact of the criminal justice system. You're not a Stitcher Premium subscriber yet. That said, I’m never trying to copy what another writer has done. Crusade for Justice by Ida B. My entire purpose of writing a literary nonfiction story about people in prison was to get closer to the truth in a way that I felt was missing in straight journalism. I guess, I resist giving an answer because I don’t want to put it on any writer to be responsible for shaking this thing. Works of Justice is an online series that features content connected to the PEN America Prison and Justice Writing Program, reflecting on the relationship between writing and incarceration, and presenting challenging conversations about criminal justice in the United States. Where to put that point is a matter of debate; some people say to put it last so the reader remembers it, while others say it should go in the middle to ground the essay. The brothers peak about their lives and engage in a Q&A with young people from POPS (Pain of the Prison System) the Club and other organizations across the country who support our underserved youth. PEN America’s Writing for Justice Fellowship commissions writers—emerging or established—to create written works of lasting merit that illuminate critical issues related to mass incarceration and catalyze public debate. Is your writing involved in that act of resistance? I would require them to read all 4,200 pages of In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. 1. The PEN Ten is PEN America’s biweekly interview series. You can tell in every sentence that she loves her people. Although many non-Native writers have written books with indigenous characters and settings, relatively few Native writers have published in this genre, although I should mention Stephen Graham Jones’s All the Beautiful Sinners, also one of my favorites. PEN America’s Writing for Justice Fellowship commissions writers—emerging or established—to create written works of lasting merit that illuminate critical issues related to … The lines were long, longer than my usual line. Bonus and ad-free content available with Stitcher Premium. And not only is it often unethical, it’s lazy. This young adult novel tells an American immigrant’s story from the perspective of a child. But, it nagged at me. Prison abolition movements draw from centuries-long history of resistance to race, class, and gender oppression. Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai. So, I would say that the biggest threats to free expression today are the material obstacles to reliable income and education. And education provides some of the fodder for free expression. Bad vetting of source data? If you’ve ever written an essay before, you know that some points are stronger than others. Naturally, my status as an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota nation influences my writing. 9. As the original/marginalized inhabitants of this land, we belong everywhere and nowhere. What are the possibilities for writing to bridge difference—or conversely, what are the limitations? I kept my weekday and weekend lives separate out of fear of the stigma that comes with being in a relationship with an incarcerated person. Really, any collection of his writings would suffice, but this one holds some particular force for me. Her exploration of the role of humanist emotions and values in reproducing while concealing relations of domination informs how I interrogate projects to “humanize” institutions of confinement and punishment. It was a canzone, a really formal poem that repeats five words, always at the end of the line, in a preset order. So, my work examines the duality of being Native but living away from my people. Defend free expression, support persecuted writers, and promote literary culture. Incarceration is simply one of the most extreme examples of it. Intro by Nicolette Natale I was exposed to ideas that helped me understand my own life, concretely and materially, and articulate my feelings about it. I would encourage the current administration to read James Baldwin’s “White Man’s Guilt,” originally published in Ebony in 1965. In an era of deep fissures and divides across the American landscape, to what extent can the act of writing provide connection between disparate identities? Video at http://bit.ly/popslucasbros This week, PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Program Director Caits Meissner speaks to the 2019 Writing for Justice Fellows. It’s a novel, fantastically meandering, historical but also old school storytelling. Have there been times when your right to free expression has been challenged? Maybe too plentiful. To me, this book serves as a prime example of writing’s ability to transform something awful into something beautiful. If someone wants to call that “alternative facts” or “fake news” simply because it presents a point of view they disagree with, so be it. Without a doubt, I’d make this administration read In the Courts of the Conqueror: The Ten Worst Indian Law Cases Ever Decided by Walter R. Echo-Hawk. Ignorance? Named in honor of author John Steinbeck, the program is guided by his lifetime of work in literature, the media, and environmental activism. My writing navigates the truth through my commitment to be fair, and to always utilize best practices in my work, like recording and transcribing interviews, following up with sources to confirm and clarify their versions of events, and triple checking the facts of a piece. The fatigue that comes from this lifestyle can dull every aspect of life, including the emotional, mental, and internal ones related to expression. The American landscape is our inheritance. For a book that does it all, part travelogue, part scientific exploration of the whale, part adventure story, diatribe against capitalism. Writers are often influenced by the words of others, building up from the foundations others have laid. 8. As each year passes, I walk a little more in my truth each day. Copyright © 2020 PEN America. The poem is maybe 65 lines long. Two, this collection is very much informed by the death of the writer’s father, and the first time I read it I had recently lost a close, old friend. 7. Most urban Natives retain strong connections to their homelands, and many reservation Natives often move between the rez and nearby cities and towns. Maged Zaher’s The Consequences of My Body. Without steady employment or a livable wage, all of a person’s time and energy are inevitably eaten up by working multiple jobs or longer low-wage shifts. And what is the relationship between truth and fiction? They can apply for this fellowship and PEN America will then pick six writers for focusing on the stories of their families, incarcerated individuals, communities as well as the criminal justice system’s wider impact. It’s an education on the invention of whiteness, which is apt since there seems nothing more important to the current administration than protecting and advancing the white race. There’s little to no “correction” in appropriation. When we are exposed to and consider the individual lives affected by government and politics, it changes perspective. © Stitcher 2019, all content is copyright of its owners. In my novel Winter Counts, I provide an homage to Owens and also the noir writer Jim Thompson. Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women by Susan Burton and Cari Lynn. Resistance is not only possible, it’s a moral necessity. The word inspiration evolved from the Latin inspirare, which means to “blow into, breathe upon,” and work that has most inspired me has breathed something into me: a sense of beauty of wisdom of possibility or sometimes something as concrete as eschewing quotation marks. Looking back, it’s ironic that I’ve been given the opportunity to write my own memoir. I don’t. PEN America’s Writing for Justice Fellowship will commission six writers—emerging or established—to create written works of lasting merit that illuminate critical issues related to mass incarceration and catalyze public debate.. But most people pick up a novel to escape discussions like this—to escape the world they inhabit. He explores the subtleties of love and war in a way that feels more real than pretty much anything I’ve read thus far. It there anything you are resisting right now? Hosted by Robert Pollock I understand that there’s certainly a discussion to be had in certain circles about writers like Faulkner, Ford Madox Ford, and David Mitchell that favor a reality in which subjectivity rules and other writers like Tom Wolfe that favored a realism that hews closer to objective truth. That’s not to say that I think only the highly educated can express themselves. I’d recommend Moby Dick, too. Because we all start with such a massive deficit of status/integrity, I’ve long felt that I had to strive to be as accurate with recordings as someone submitting something to a peer-reviewed journal. Our jobs as writers is to write it anyway. Even though I always stuck to the facts in all my prior reporting, there are essential truths that are sometimes lost in third person, objective journalism, particularly when covering criminal justice stories. PEN America’s $10,000 Writing for Justice Fellowship will commission six writers – emerging or established – to create written works of lasting merit that illuminate critical issues related to mass incarceration and catalyze public debate. In other words, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Scott Pruitt aren’t cancers on the body politic because they read too much Joyce or Musil; they’re liars because they are trying to write fiction onto the world and they know they are this, they know why they are doing this. No Disrespect by Sister Souljah. It is a word in which, to every person, has a different meaning. Bummer! The emotion, the complexity, some fear. My work is involved in resisting the perpetuation of incarceration under the guise of prison and jail “reform.” As many brilliant scholars and activists—mostly trans and cis women of color—have shown, attempts to reform incarceration have tended to further entrench carceral systems and punishment as a mode of social control and state-sanctioned violence. This commitment to truth is vital to me because it is what saved me. 6. Like Don Quixote. Victor Serge’s Men in Prison.
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