Indiana Prison Writers Workshop is a 12-week creative writing workshop that extends the state’s literary community to correctional facilities and communities impacted by violence.
The curriculum, designed by a team of writers from across the state, offers incarcerated students and those who have experienced violence in their communities a foundation in creative writing through the use of weekly writing prompts as well as an introduction to fiction and non-fiction, poetry, rhetoric, and playwriting. Each week, we provide a sacred space where students can write and feel free to share. Each participant in the writing circle is the expert of his or her own story and they share one at a time while others do their best to listen without judgement. This helps foster empathy.
As part of our writers weekly assignments, working drafts of stories are brought to class to share and submit for instructor feedback. Students’ drafts are read in class, and classmates offer instructor-led critiques and reactions to each piece. We consider grammar and spelling during their review in order to improve students’ basic writing skills.
As writers, we get a chance to hear all stories, and this feedback is invaluable for revision. As listeners and readers, students learn how to articulate what is working or not working in another student’s draft, which also enhances our ability to review work. Upon successful completion of the workshop, students will have a portfolio of revised stories and a published anthology of their work.
Other components of the workshop include visiting writers, and submitting student work for publication as appropriate. Guest writers offer expertise in specific genres, such as fiction, screenplay writing, etc.
In order to make an impact, we must do so not only in the lives of the imprisoned participants, but on broader social change in our current system of mass incarceration.
STUDIES/DATA
In 2019, the IU Public Policy Institute Center for Health & Justice Research conducted a one-year process evaluation on Indiana Prison Writers Workshop. View the IPWW Brief below and Full Report.