Right To Write Press
Promoting the growth of emerging writers incarcerated
in California State prisons
Right to Write Press was formed to promote the growth of emerging writers who are incarcerated in California State prisons.
The Press believes that seeing a writer’s work in print is transformative, especially for the incarcerated writer. Right to Write Press provides guidance and publication opportunities to prisoners who may never have realized that they are, at heart, writers.
The reality of writing in a prison is that it is immediate, personal, and often interrupted. Writers are moved from one prison to another, and teachers and programs often become difficult to sustain if available at all. Few prisons have strong writing programs. Typewriters are rare commodities. Writing is a means of exploring and confronting individual experience, potentially facilitating identity transformation. Publication further recognizes any writer’s gifts and achievements. A voice silenced by a troubled past and by the prison system can be nurtured and reclaimed.
Right to Write Press wishes for prison writers to grow as human beings and grow as artists by honoring their achievements in professional-quality publications. Right to Write Press accepts and reviews manuscripts from incarcerated poets, novelists, essay writers, and songwriters, and will work with authors with an aim to publish their body of work for distribution to family and friends, and perhaps to a broader audience as well. Besides being meaningful for the writer, the writer’s family, and those in the broader community who read these works, publishing works by incarcerated writers can contribute to the writers’ efforts to seek readiness for parole, demonstrating dedication, discipline, and mature achievement to the boards that determine eligibility for release.
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Project Directors
Rose Black
Rose Black's poetry has been widely published and she is the author of three books: Clearing, Winter Light, and Green Field. Her first two books, Clearing and Winter Light, are included in Yale’s Beinecke Library for the Yale Collection of American Literature. Rose has been editor of the Marin Poetry Center Anthology, and she currently mentors incarcerated writers from Salinas Valley State Prison and beyond. Her extensive article about the workshop there is featured in the Red Wheelbarrow (2015) Literary Magazine.
Ken Weisner
Ken Weisner is emeritus faculty in English at De Anza Community College in Cupertino. He both advises and edits Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine, which for the past ten years has featured an annual selection of work of incarcerated writers. He also coordinates, with Poetry Center San José, the annual Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize. For fifteen years, Ken edited Quarry West out of Porter College, UCSC. Ken has also published four volumes of his own poetry, three with Hummingbird Press, including Anything on Earth (2010) and Cricket to Star (2017), and Songs for the Great Horned (2024) from Shanti Arts Press in Maine. Ken has an Iowa MFA in poetry writing and a PhD in comp lit from UC Santa Cruz. Ken facilitated a poetry writing workshop for many years at Salinas Valley State Prison.
Links
Here are some links to sites related to literature by prisoners:
Julie Murphy interviews fellow teachers of the Salinas Valley State Prison Poetry Workshop—Rose Black, Lisa Charnock and Ken Weisner. Please join our lively conversations about the poetry workshop, our experiences teaching, and be ready to hear some amazing poems written by the workshop participants! Broadcast Sunday, May 24th on KSQD 90.7 Santa Cruz. Be sure to click on the “…” at the end of the description for a list of related links.
Lisa Charnock and Rose Black: Readings from Salinas Valley State Prison
Jim Russo’s Central Coast Poetry Shows presents a reading by Lisa Charnock and Rose Black of poetry by participants in the Salinas Valley State Prison EOP poetry workshop, as well as a discussion of Right to Write Press. Click here to view the video on YouTube.
The Santa Cruz Poetry Project began as the legacy project of Ellen Bass while she was Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County. Over the past four years, the program has facilitated workshops throughout the county and with your help will continue changing the lives of incarcerated men and women one word, one poem at a time.
The Prisoners Literature Project is an all-volunteer, non-profit group that sends free books directly to prisoners who request them from throughout the United States. Working almost continuously for thirty years, our U.S. prison books program has gotten (literally) tons of books into the American prison system, while staying overwhelmingly ‘grassroots’ – no full-time employees, no overhead eating up your donations.
Prison & Justice Writing – PEN America
For more than four decades, PEN America’s Prison Writing Program has amplified the writing of thousands of imprisoned writers by providing free resources, skilled mentors, and audiences for their writing.
Prisons Foundation | Prison Activist Resource Center
Prisons Foundation publishes books written by or about prisoners. Their publishing program includes all types of books or manuscripts published on their website in the exact manner submitted, with no censorship or editing and no charge to publish a book online.
Our special thanks to Sandow Birk for his permission to use his painting “Salinas Valley State Prison”, Courtesy of Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco.