This online writing circle brings together people in re-entry, prison family members, and people with projects taking place in carceral settings, with the goal of shaping their own writing for website publication, public presentation, academic study, and advocacy for a change.  Facilitated by Herstory’s founder and creative director, and mentored by Herstory’s Beyond Bars fellows, it welcomes people who have been directly impacted by the criminal legal system, who are serious about engaging in book length projects or producing shorter pieces meant to engage an audience in thinking deeply about freedom and justice,  forgiveness, reparation, repair, and breaking the cycles of violence, retribution and revenge. 

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The group comes together each Thursday from 1 to 3pm, Eastern Time, to record their working sessions and the “Conversations that Dare Us” that follow each reading with the goal of sharing them with other people behind and beyond bars who might create echoing pieces of writing and conversations to be widely circulated in an ever-growing network of writers seeking change.   

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New members are accepted as places become available, following the submission of a 750-word essay about what draws them to the project, their dreams for using their personal story for justice, and their organizational or academic connections. 

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For more information, email contactus at herstorywriters.org  

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Current Fellows: 

ShaRize: Artistic Director for Time Out of Joint

Shanequa Levin: Founder and Director of Women’s Diversity Network

Graham Reside: Vanderbilt Divinity School, Working with men on Death Row in Tennessee

Amber Darkins, Junior Fellow: Recent graduate of Adelphi University