I am grateful to the Center on Crime, Communities and Culture of the Open Society Institute for awarding me a Soros Senior Justice Fellowship to pursue this project. I thank especially director Nancy Mahon, Katherine Diaz, Miriam Porter, Mart Cotter, and Soros Justice Fellows Joycelyn Pollock, Ellen Barry, and Angela Brown.
My greatest debt is to all members of the PEN Prison Writing Program committee over the years who cared enoguh to read through the formidable mass of manuscript and to write something constructive to each contestant. And especially to our invaluable Prison Writing Program director, Jackson Taylor, and the current members of the committee who entrusted me with this task and pointed me in the direction of interesting work: Susan Braudy, Beth Dembitzer, Bob Hamburger, Starry Krueger, Claudia Menza, Janine Pommy Vega, Marie Ponsot, Rochelle Ratner, Sue Rosen, Joan Silber, Layle Silbert, and Chuck Wachtel. Members Fielding Dawson, Hettie Jones, Bibi Wein, and Jackson Taylor offered very useful reactions to my first raw selection. Anthologists Fielding, Janine, and Hettie also helped locate texts and ex-prisoners, Chuck and Marie offered poetic counsel, and Bibi editorial experience. Current chair Hettie was a ready ear and wise adviser every step of the way.
For searching files and memories to recreate the story of PEN’s origins, I am grateful to Thomas Fleming, Lucy Kavaler, Vicki Lindner, Ann McGovern, Kathrin Perutz, and especially John Morrone, who for several years helped place prison writings in magazines. At PEN in the late eighties, Gara LaMarche helped rescue the PWP from near-death and later supported it materially from his position at the Open Society Institute. From the PEN staff, special thanks to PWP Coordinator Agustin Maes for swift provision of vital PWP materials. I appreciate the consistent backing of PEN American Center’s former and current executive directors, Karen Kennerly and Michael Roberts, and especially President Michael Scammel.
From Fortune Society, Harvey Isaccs, Sheila Maroney, and Sylvia McKeane helped me locate past winners’ texts; so did Harry Smith, of the Smith, and Martin Tucker, of Confrontation. Anthologists and prison teachers Joe Bruchac, Janet Lembke, and Richard Shelton aided in locating authors. For generously sharing their myriad expertise, I thank Claudia Angelous, Jennie Brown, Raymond A. Brown, Scott Christianson, Lois Morris, H. Bruce Franklin, Jim Knipfel, Mark Mauer, Dorothy Potter, and Richard Stratton. I am indebted to John and Sue Leonard and the Nation for publishing my article on PEN prison writing.
I thank Elizabeth Kronzek for archival research at Princeton, Brennan Grayson, Lesley Scammell, and Chloe Wheatley for research assistance, and Sara Lorimer, Bob deBarge, Grazyna Drabik, and Laura Schiller for typing the manuscript. I am blessed with friends who are passionately opinionated readers—Janet Brof, Bill DeMoss, Marilyn Katz, Danny Kaiser, Lee McClain, Antonia Meltzoff, Howard Waskow, Grey Wolfe, and Paul Chevigny.
A writer could not ask for a more energetic agent than my friend Sydelle Kramer at the Frances Goldin Literary Agency nor a more sympathetic editor than Coates Bateman at Arcade Publishing.
“Hands like yours help cup the flame,” William Orlando wrote in thanking PEN. The authors’ eloquent reminders of how much this work matters to them and others behind bars has made the work most gratifying. For generous research assistance, I thank especially William Aberg, Marilyn Buck, Chuck Culhane, Victor Hassine, Diane Hamill Metzger, Paul Mulryan, Charles Norman, Barbara Saunders, Joe Sissler, William Waters, and members of the writing workshop at Bedford Hills. And finally, I am forever indebted to those who got me started—my parolee students in the Queens SEEK Program in 1967–68 and my class at Westchester County Penitentiary, 1969–71, especially Charles Caldwell, whose example of self-transformation through reading and writing has stayed with me over the decades.