Anthony Papa on Prison Writing- PEN Voices from Inside

Tony Papa author of 15 to Life: How I Painted My Way to Freedom speaks about his experience being sentenced to 15 to life under the Rockefeller Drug Laws and his discovery of his talents as a writer and visual artist while imprisoned at the National Arts Club in New York City on November 9th, 2011 at a PEN prison writing program fundraiser

PEN Members and special guests gather for a reading of award-winning prose and poetry from the PEN Prison Writing Contest. Proceeds from the event help ensure that PEN's hallmark program continues to promote the restorative and rehabilitative power of writing by providing hundreds of inmates with skilled writing mentors, free Handbooks for Writers in Prison, and a forum where inmates are encouraged to use the written word as a legitimate form of power.

This event featured a special reading of poems and prose by incarcerated men and women everywhere from El Paso to Riker's Island, from Ft. Leavenworth to San Diego.

In 2011, PEN's Prison Writing Program:

• Distributed more than 8,000 copies of the PEN Handbook for Writers in Prison free of charge to men and women serving sentences throughout the United States
• Connected over 100 mentors with writers in prison for one-on-one instruction
• Judged over 1,500 manuscripts in our Prison Writing Contest
• Reprinted an Anthology Doing Time, with a new forward

for the full 1:30 minute video please go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoo8rzlYtx4

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• prison
• International PEN
• writing
• creativity
• Book Educational Creativity
• poetry