A Jam-Packed Weekend of Prison Panels

Whet your prison-panel appetite, the Friday night before KtB’s Prison-Spirituality Complex. Join Anthony Cardenales, Piper Kerman, and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, for the PEN Prison Writing Panel, moderated by Jackson Taylor.

PEN American Festival Writing Inside, Writing Outside Panel
Friday, April 30, 2010, 6:30-8:00 PM
Elebash Recital Hall, CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY

To the average person, the daily life behind prison walls is an invisible world. Writing about the everyday experiences of life from inside this system closed to the general public comes with as many challenges as writing about the experience outside. Piper Kerman, who documented the thirteen months she spent in prison in Orange is the New Black, is joined by journalist Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, author of the award-winning Random Family, which charts the lives of a community in the South Bronx, and by Anthony Cardenales, one of LeBlanc’s subjects. These three writers will discuss their work and how the polarities of documenting and living the prison experience affected their writing. To the average person, the daily life behind prison walls is an invisible world. Writing about the everyday experiences of life from inside this system closed to the general public comes with as many challenges as writing about the experience outside. Piper Kerman, who documented the thirteen months she spent in prison in Orange is the New Black, is joined by journalist Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, author of the award-winning Random Family, which charts the lives of a community in the South Bronx, and by Anthony Cardenales, one of LeBlanc’s subjects. These three writers will discuss their work and how the polarities of documenting and living the prison experience affected their writing.

Free and open to the public. No reservations.

Sponsored by the PEN Prison Writing Program as part of the PEN World Voices Festival, a panel discussion with Anthony Cardenales, Piper Kerman, and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc; moderated by Jackson Taylor.

Taylor has directed the Prison Writing Program at PEN American Center for over 20 years and has edited the program’s Handbook for Writers in Prison. He acts as a consultant to the Anne Frank Center’s Prison Diary Project. He is associate director of the graduate writing program at the New School’s, and he has taught creative writing at the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen. His poems have recently appeared in Sleeping Fish, LIT, Witness, and Barrow Street, and will be included in the upcoming anthology What’s Your Exit? A Literary Detour through New Jersey. He is also author of the novel The Blue Orchard.