"Writing Beyond the Prison": Incarcerated Authors, Academics, and Activists Confront Mass Incarceration featuring keynote presentation by Reginald Dwayne Betts/Yale University and founder/director of Freedom Reads - "The Circumference of a Prison: Youth, Race, and the Failures of the American Justice System", Friday Apr 28, 2023 from 11:30AM -6:30 PM In-person and via Zoom in Rm 1006 Humanities Lecture Hall, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook NY

This event is part of American Council of Learned Societies-funded public humanities project, “Writing Beyond the Prison: Reimagining the Carceral Ecosystem with Incarcerated Authors,” which is creating an online curriculum for writing in carceral settings and building an archive of writings by incarcerated authors and their families to be housed at Stony Brook University.

Registration required for Zoom attendance. Please click here to register. Image by Joe Gough.

Conference Schedule:

11:30-11:45am Prelude: “Elephant In the Room,” sung by Efuenafo Siaka-Bamdele

  Short reading/recitation by Rich Paul (S.T.R.O.N.G. Youth, Inc.)

11:45am-12pm Welcome–conference organizers

12-1:30pm Roundtable: Writing for Liberation

Paula Lehman-Ewing, Re-imagining the Revolution

Ivan Kilgore,  Founder, United Black Family Scholarship Foundation 

Erika Duncan, Founder, Herstory Writers Network

Jorge Renaud, National Criminal Justice Director, Latino Justice; Poet

1:30-1:45pm Voices from Incarcerated Authors

1:45-2:45pm  Roundtable: Teaching Behind and Beyond Bars

Erika Duncan, "Herstory Beyond Bars" online curriculum for writing in carceral settings

Carceral Research & Teaching Fellows, "Teaching, and Learning from, Incarcerated Authors"

2:45-3pm Voices from Incarcerated Authors 

3–3:30pm Coffee Break

3:30-5pm Panel 2: Speaking for Social Justice

Rhonda Williams, Seigenthaler Chair in American History, Vanderbilt University 

Marc Mauer, Director (former) of the Sentencing Project (by Zoom) 

Glenn E Martin, Formerly incarcerated Activist (by Zoom)

5-6pm Remarks by Carl Lejuez, Provost 

Keynote Presentation: Reginald Dwayne Betts, Yale University; Founder/Director, Freedom Reads 

“The Circumference of a Prison: Youth, Race and the Failures of the American Justice System”

6pm Concluding remarks followed by Reception