Writing on the Walls: American Prison Writing, and the 2007 Vasyl Stus & Thomas Paine Awards
PEN New England and the Cambridge Forum to host
Writing on the Walls: American Prison Writing &
The 2007 Vasyl Stus & Thomas Paine Awards
Thursday, April 19, 2007 at 7:30 PM
First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church
3 Church Street
Harvard Square
Cambridge, MA
On April 19, PEN New England’s Freedom-to-Write (FTW) Committee, in partnership with the Cambridge Forum, will host Writing on the Walls, a panel discussion about writing in, from, and about American prisons.
The panel, moderated by Dr. H. Bruce Franklin, Rutgers University professor and author of Prison Writings in 20th Century America, will feature:
- Jennifer Gonnerman, former Village Voice reporter, author of the National Book Award finalist Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett
- Jimmy Santiago Baca, former inmate who, during five years in a maximum security prison, found a passion for poetry. Winner of a Pushcart Prize and an American Book Award, he is the author of A Place to Stand and The Importance of a Piece of Paper
- Jean Trounstine, author of Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women’s Prison, documenting her ten years of work at Framingham Women’s Prison teaching literature and writing
- Dwayne Betts, former inmate of eight years and gifted poet, subsequently founded the YoungMenRead book club at the Washington, DC, bookstore he managed; subject of a recent feature article in the Washington Post, he’s now a Writer in Residence at the DC Creative Writing Workshops and a Cave Canem fellow
Writing on the Walls is being held in conjunction with the presentation of PEN New England’s annual Vasyl Stus Freedom-to-Write Award and the Thomas Paine Freedom-to-Write Award for American Writers. The Vasyl Stus Award recognizes a writer who has been persecuted for the peaceful expression of his or her views in writing, and whose courage in the face of censorship and oppression has been exemplary. The Thomas Paine Freedom to Write Award for American Writers recognizes and aids American writers who are either 1) being persecuted for their writings and for whom material aid would make a great difference in their struggle to defend themselves, or 2) speaking truth to power and thereby risking such persecution.
The Stus Award will be awarded to Vietnamese poet Vo Lam Te, held in a forced labor camp since 1979. Vo Lam Te, b. 1948, was deported without trial in 1975 for "re-education" in a forced labor camp, from which he escaped in 1978. The following year he was sentenced to 20 years for his human rights activities. While in prison Vo Lam Te composed a collection of poems, In Front of the Palace of Justice, which he attempted to smuggle out of the camp. Guards discovered the manuscript, and his sentence was increased to life imprisonment for "writing poetry in detention." After over 30 years of detention, ill treatment (including severe beatings), and malnutrition, Vo Lam Te is in very poor health.
The Thomas Paine Freedom-to-Write Award for American Writers will be awarded to Piri Thomas, an American of African and Puerto Rican descent, grew up in Spanish Harlem, faced a vicious street environment of poverty, racism, and crime, and served seven years of hard-labor incarceration in Sing Sing. Vowing “to use his street and prison know-how to reach hard core youth and turn them away from a life of crime,” Thomas then wrote the 1967 memoir Down These Mean Streets, which The New York Times called “something of a linguistic event. Gutter language, Spanish imagery and personal poetics ... mingle into a kind of individual statement that has very much its own sound...” He is also the author of several collections of poetry and stories and the memoir Seven Long Times.
For more information contact pen_ne@lesley.edu, and visit cambridgeforum.org.
Books by the participants will be available for sale and signing courtesy of the Harvard Bookstore.
Megan Marshall Reads at Hotel Marlowe
Wednesday April 4, 2007
6:15 PM to 7:00 PM
During the Hotel Marlowe's Wine Hour, which begins at 5:00 PM
Megan Marshall is the author of The Peabody Sisters (Houghton Mifflin, 2005), a landmark biography of three women who made American intellectual history. Described as "a stunning work" by The New York Times, The Peabody Sisters was a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, and the recipient of the Francis Parkman Prize from The Society of American Historians, and the Mark Lynton History Prize. Marshall is currently a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, working on a new biography, titled Ebe: The Untold Story of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Forgotten Sister. She has also written for many publications including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Slate, and The New York Times Book Review.
Porter Square Books will be selling books at this reading.
The Hotel Marlowe is located at 25 Edwin H. Land Boulevard, Cambridge. Inexpensive parking is available in the Cambridgeside Galleria garage with direct entry into the hotel from Levels A and C. The hotel is closest to the Lechmere T-stop, and is within walking distance of Charles and Kendall Square.
For more information call 617-824-8820 or e-mail pen_ne@lesley.edu