It can be dangerous to be a writer in prison in the United States. But writing can also be a tool of liberation, giving inmates an important outlet for expression and the skills to write letters home, tell their stories to parole committees, and find work and community on the outside.

For today’s show, Tuesday host Ali Muldrow spends the hour with Caits Meissner talking about prison writing and The Sentences That Create Us, a collection of writing by justice-involved people and “a book that will meet a writer anywhere in their journey.”

Caits Meissner is director of Prison and Justice Writing at PEN America and editor of The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting A Writer’s Life in Prison (Haymarket, 2022).

Cover photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

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