Gabalfa Press

Congratulations to Art and his other 2019-2020 fellows for this prestigious award and opportunity.

Art will be working on a book-length compilation of creative nonfiction essays focusing on the foster-care-to-prison pipeline, an area of much needed research and attention.

Writing for Justice Fellowship

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. The 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.

The PEN America Prison Writing Program commissioned currently incarcerated writers, of whom Arthur Longworth was one, to reflect on the tensions between the realm of public readership and the often hidden creative life in prison for the 2019 World Voices Festival.

Works of Justice: On Writing in Prison

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. What risks do incarcerated writers face when their words travel beyond prison walls?

Watch actor Jon Sands read Longworth’s “The Railroad” in New York. The piece discusses how fraught writing in prison can be, and how difficult it is for prison stories to make it out to the free world. As Longworth writes, “Ever piece of writing the prison has confiscated from me prosecutes a fundamental tenet of prison in the US, particularly the peculiarly American institution of mass incarceration. That is, the pathological and historically embedded idea that prisoners are not to have control of any facet of the institution, including narration of their own context or experience within it.”

This reading is especially resonant when considering recent bans on printed words entering the prison much less escaping.

Arthur Longworth reflects on the value of books and the struggle to write and think freely while incarcerated.

Why it’s so hard to write in prison | Opinion

Arthur Longworth on the struggle to read, write and think freely inside a concrete box.

In his essay, The Buddha in the Big Yard, published this week in Medium, Arthur Longworth reflects on the loss of an ally and on spirituality in prison.

The Buddha in the Big Yard
View this collection on Medium.com