F169.
Inside Out, Outside In: How Teaching in Prison Affects Creative Pedagogy
Friday, February 9, 2024
12:10 pm to 1:25 pm
Prison writing programs often focus on the knowledge and expertise instructors bring to those who are incarcerated. In this panel, we consider the other pole: what insights and practices do teachers and practitioners gain, and how can working inside be a fertile creative, scholarly, and restorative practice for all involved? Panelists have taught classes in such facilities as Rikers Island, MCI-Concord, and Texas State prisons, and will discuss their experiences and share their work in response.
Participants
Dr. Ravi Shankar, Pushcart-prize winning author of Correctional and professor at Tufts University, has written fifteen books. Chairman of APWT & founder of Drunken Boat, he has won fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and PEN, appeared on the BBC, PBS, and NPR, and in the New York Times, Paris Review, and more.
Jen Fitzgerald is a poet, essayist, and photographer. She is the founder of Arthur Kill Books. Her first full-length collection, The Art of Work, was published by Noemi Press in 2016. Her work has appeared in such venues as PBS Newshour, Tin House, Boston Review, and The Nation. JenFitzgerald.com
Anna V. Q. Ross’s latest book, Flutter, Kick, won the Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award from Red Hen Press and the Julia Ward Howe Award. She is a Fulbright Scholar, a Mass Cultural Council fellow, and poetry editor for Salamander. She teaches at Tufts University and through the Emerson Prison Initiative.
Shreerekha Subramanian is associate dean and professor of humanities at University of Houston-Clear Lake in the College of Human Sciences and Humanities. She is the editor of the volume Carceral Liberalism: Feminist Voices Against State Violence (University of Illinois Press, August 2023).
Brandon Dean Lamson is the author of Caged: A Teacher’s Journey Through Rikers, Or How I Beheaded The Minotaur (Fordham University Press, 2023), Starship Tahiti (UMass Press, 2013), and Houston Gothic (LaMunde Press, 2008). He teaches creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin.
