Lifting the Lid: How Prison Writing Workshops Shed Light on the Social Shadow

While the social, political, economic, educational, and cultural consequences of high rates of incarceration have been well documented, the social psychological dynamics have not received as much discussion. I offer here a first person narrative reflection on the connections between a writing workshops and raising social awareness of the realities of day-to-day lives of inmates. Appropriate writing pedagogy, personal challenges to meeting to the workshops, and the need to publish inmate stories inform the essay