“Man, it’s hard finding things to write about in here,” Charles says to me during class. “I just keep writing about the same depressing stuff, ya know? It’s like there’s only so much good you can find to write about in a place like this. And somebody told me, you gotta get out and see …
I started my first garden this summer. I finally have the space to grow one. I’ve always wanted to plant, always felt the need to produce. But mostly, I want to learn from the process of gardening. I want to know what needs more water, more sun, what survives cold nights, and what clings tight …
I gave the students a week off to revise their work. It was nice to have a break, but I found myself constantly thinking about the world around me in relation to the inmates at the jail. I watched Gasland the other night, a documentary about the Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling that’s going on …
A quote opens our lesson for the week: The art of revision is the art of writing: It’s something I’ve heard before, but I don’t know who said it. The men choose a piece of work that they feel good about, one that they put up on the projector and read aloud to the class. …
We make lists to organize our lives. Lists of food. Of errands. Of goals. “To Do.” They’re concrete things that measure our productivity, our ambition, sometimes even our feelings. This week for class, we focused on list making. The men had some experience making lists during our first class when they made lists of things …
A colorful baby boy’s room. A quiet fishing lake. A tight-knit urban neighborhood. A woman’s steady arms. A lively street in NYC. These are the places where the inmates of ACJ want to be. Places they want to remember, places they choose to re-create. As each man reads his piece to the class, I start …
I taught my first creative writing class at the ACJ (Allegheny County Jail) this week. I thought I’d be nervous but the moment the fifteen male inmates walk into the room and sit in a circle, I feel calm, comfortable, eager. I suppose that’s how a teacher should feel approaching his/her first class. The inmates …
“I share a cell with another guy. It’s more like a bathroom. There’s a sink and a toilet, and where a bathtub would normally be is our bed. It’s horrible,” one of the inmates says. “Gosh” I say, eyes wide, trying to imagine living in such a small space. Big things come in small packages. …