Near the end of my 24-year sentence, I discovered something I hadn’t expected to find in that stark environment: a place where vulnerability could coexist with safety. The Indiana Prison Writers Workshop, led by volunteers Debra and Tiffany, created something precious within those concrete walls — a space where creativity wasn’t just permitted but encouraged, where we could excavate the stories buried beneath years of institutional survival.
In prison, you learn to armor yourself against a thousand daily indignities. You develop a careful vernacular, a protective cynicism, and the measured movements of someone always aware they’re being watched. But in that 12-week workshop, Debra and Tiffany somehow created conditions where those defenses could come down. They didn’t just teach us about writing; they demonstrated through their presence that we were worth believing in. Having them see potential in us when we couldn’t see it in ourselves became a cornerstone of what would later become genuine self-belief out here.
The skills I refined through IPWW — the discipline to excavate truth from experience, the ability to transform raw emotion into structured narrative, the confidence to trust my own voice — these have become the foundation for everything I’ve published since my release. My writing about reentry, the challenges of rebuilding relationships, and the complex journey of transformation all trace back to what I learned in that workshop. They didn’t just teach us to write; they taught us that our stories mattered, that the very experiences that society wanted to forget could become bridges toward understanding and healing. Programs like IPWW prove that even in the most restrictive environments, transformation remains possible when someone believes in your capacity to change.
READ MORE OF BRETT’S WRITINGS: rcjourney.cloud
