THE WRITERS INSIDE:

The most important agents of the Writers in Prisons Project are the individuals who attend the classes. At Oakhill, participants are writers, rappers, musicians, scholars, farmers, businessmen, fathers, husbands, and on and on. They are men between 18 and 80-something in age. Some are there for several months, some have been in the system for thirty years. Because the identity of the participants is as a writer, scholar, artist, or musician (whatever they have the bravery to lay claim to) volunteers usually do not know, and never ask, what they are serving their sentence for. Often, however, after continued participation in the classes, students will reference the actions that led to their sentence, which have ranged from drug-related offenses to manslaughter. Though they come from widely varied backgrounds, one thing almost all of them express is that the classes help them be more honest with themselves and help to remind them of who (or who else) they are as humans. The classes, and volunteers, do that by holding a safe space with well-defined boundaries and by bringing in interesting materials. But the participants do the rest of the work. For some participants, that work has meant writing around the acts they're serving time for, the lives they lived before being sentenced, the lives that are going on outside without them. For others, that work means a deep focus on craft, close reading, expanding themselves as artists. For others still, that work has meant writing to their parents, their partners, or their children with more openness and expressivity. For most, that work means getting to experience their peers and themselves as writers and men in the classroom in a different way than they experience each other/themselves on the yard. Frequently these new/changed peer relationships carry over outside of the classroom, and many participants share their writing, readings, and thoughts about both with each other between classes.

THE WRITERS OUTSIDE:

As a collective of writers and teachers, our intent is also to act as support to individuals who wish to start similar programs in their communities. Though we are not experts, we freely share the library of exercises, handouts, and other materials we've used in a correctional setting. We are glad to use our writing networks to help you contact writers in your area who may be interested in partnering with you if you're near an underserved institution. And we're always glad to share thoughts on making the experience as enriching, safe, respectful, and dynamic as possible.

CURRENT INSTRUCTORS:

Laurel Bastian founded the collaborative and co-facilitates the poetry class and the Afro-American Studies class, serves as resource and mentor for volunteers, and coordinates the program. She has taught writing and communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Madison College, and serves on the Arts/Culture Grant Advisory Panel of the Dane County Cultural Affairs Commission. She works to enforce civil rights law with the Fair Housing Center of Greater Madison.

Janelle Pulczinski has a Master's Degree in English, a Master's Degree in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and is currently working towards a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She leads a reading group which discusses novels and short stories and examines how those stories speak to the experiences of students. Janelle secured a grant through the University of Wisconsin Madison's HEX program that was used to buy books for the Afro-American Studies class and for the reading group.

Colleen Lucey is working on her Master's Degree in Slavic Languages and Literature and has a background in theater and art in community. She led the Fiction/Playwrighting class and now co-facilitates the Fiction Reading class.

Maggie Messitt started and leads the Memoir/Creative Nonfiction class. Maggie is an American writer and editor focused on narrative and immersion journalism in middle America & southern Africa. She lived in rural Africa for more than six years and split her life between two continents for two more. She returned to the US as a full-time resident in early 2011. Maggie currently resides in Madison, WI, where she continues to write and edit. She also teaches writing workshops with the Midwest Center for the Arts. When she gets back to southern Africa, Maggie reports from rural communities in Mozambique, Swaziland, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. She also continues her work as a media educator and newspaper consultant in underserved regions. Maggie lived in Limpopo, South Africa, from 2003-2011, during which time she was the Founding Director of Amazwi, a non-profit media arts organization for African women, editor of its community newspaper and magazine, and a freelance international correspondent.

Steel Wagstaff is a graduate student in English literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he studies 20th Century American poetry and environmental criticism. For the past few years he has been co-curating the FELIX reading series, which seeks to highlight the work of writers who have a close connection to small and independent presses. He recently earned his Master's Degree in Library and Information Studies

Christopher Earle co-facilitates the Afro-American Studies class and is especially interested in critical race theory, cultural studies comp pedagogies, and the relationship between rhetoric, emotion, and hegemony. He is working towards an English PhD at the University of Madison Wisconsin.

Josh Kalscheur is originally from Beaver Dam, Wisconsin and now resides in Madison where he teaching at Madison College. His poems have appeared in, or are forthcoming from Hayden's Ferry Review, Georgetown Review, Mid-American Review, Many Mountains Moving and Copper Nickel, among others. He is also the Poetry Editor for Devil's Lake, a journal of poetry and prose out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

other instructor bios coming soon... We are lucky enough to have additional instructors joining us, and they'll be featured here in the coming weeks. Thanks to them for their time!.

PAST INSTRUCTORS:

Tracy Brimhall, nominated for two Pushcarts in the last year, and recipient of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award, has work just about everywhere, including the Kenyon Review, New England Review, Field, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. She also facilitated the poetry class at Oakhill.

Marysa LaRowe is a fiction writer and graduate of the UW Madison's Creative Writing program who has done much work in the non-profit sector and is currently getting her MFA at Vanderbuilt. She co-facilitated the Fiction writing class and lead a book donation drive for the prison library.

Maria Bibbs, PhD is a recent graduate of the University of Wisconsin Madison's English doctoral program, and also holds an MA in Afro-American Studies. She co-facilitated the Afro-American Studies class. She is especially interested African American rhetorical traditions, the Black press, autobiography, visual rhetoric, critical race theory, and the educational philosophy of Paulo Freire.

Phillip Lee recieved his Bachelors in Afro-American Studies program at the University of Wisconsin Madison. He co-facilitated an Afro-American Studies class which examines and connects classic texts, current events, and the mens' own experiences.

Lydia Conklin is a fiction writer who co-facilitated the Fiction/Playwriting class. She graduated from Harvard University in 2007 and was awarded a Pushcart Prize in 2011. She is working on an MFA in fiction at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Meghan O'Gieblyn is an MFA candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Before coming to Madison, she taught ESL in Detroit, wrote comment for a radio station in Ecuador, studied theology and picked up the banjo. She co-facilitated the Fiction/Playwrighting class.

J. D. Nordell, whose nonfiction has appeared in Slate, Salon and The New York Times, facilitated a poetry class.

Christine Holm is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Arizona. She co-facilitated the poetry/spoken word class.

Chris Mohar was the Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing and is currently on the faculty of the Division of Continuing Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He taught fiction at Oakhill from 2009 to 2011.

Naomi Olson completed a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literature. She initiated and facilitated a fiction class at Oakhill Correctional and brought in her unique perspective on Russian Literature. Naomi secured a grant through the University of Wisconsin Madison's HEX (Humanities Exposed) program to bring materials into the prison. She chose to use part of this grant to buy nearly one thousand dollars of books for Oakhill's library.

Amanda Rea, Pushcart Prize recipient, whose fiction and nonfiction appears in Kenyon Review, The Sun, Indiana Review, Iowa Review and others, facilitated a poetry class.

Michael Sheehan was the James C. McCreight Fiction Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing and was also a co-editor of the Sonoma Review. Michael facilitated a fiction class at Oakhill.

NOTABLE VISITORS:

In addition to exceedingly generous instructors, we have also brought wonderful visiting writers, community members, and academics to the classes to share their love of writing and to hear the writing of the men. Every visitor has (unprompted) said that the experience was an extraordinary one; those who teach say they wish their students had the same level of enthusiasm and insight, and all comment on the talent of the participants. Some of the visiting writers have included:

Richard Davis, legendary bass player, who performed/recorded with Sarah Vaughan, Eric Dolphy, Frank Sinatra, Barbara Streisand, Miles Davis, and many others, and who still teaches both adults and young people in Madison. Mr. Davis also runs the Madison chapter of the Institutes for the Healing of Racism.

Fabu Carter Brisco, Madison Poet Laureate and author of several books of poetry and prose.

Ron Kuka, UW-Madison Creative Writing faculty member and fiction author, and one of the best creative writing instructors many students report ever having (for the record, this is Laurel writing, not Ron).

Wendy Vardaman, author of Obstructed View and co-editor of the online and print publication Verse Wisconsin.

Roland Jackson, faculty member of Madison College, who taught a recidivism prevention course for individuals incarcerated in the Dane County Jail, and who holds a Masters in Afro-American Studies.

Melvin Hinton, producer of community radio station WORT's Radio Literature program and member of the Radio Literature Collective.

Jason England, fantastic fiction writer and teacher.

We'd love to add your name to the list of visiting writers. If you would like to get involved or just learn more about our program, contact Laurel by clicking the "contact" link below.

Contact