Hannah Kate

poet, short story writer and editor based in Manchester

OUT NOW: Free to Write: Prison Voices Past and Present (Headland)

Okay, so despite this blog supposedly just being for my creative work, I thought I’d mention a book I’ve been involved in as an academic. (I know I keep doing this, but I can’t seem to keep my two personas separate at the moment!)

Free to Write: Prison Voices Past and Present is an anthology of essays and creative writing that has grown out of a research project at Liverpool John Moores University. The first section of the book contains essays about the history of creative writing in prisons, and the second section showcases original writing from individuals within the UK prison system (with a commentary by Adam Creed). Writing as Hannah Priest, I contributed an essay for the first section, and I was one of the editors of the book along with Gareth Creer and Tamsin Spargo. I’ll post something longer about my own essay in the book later this week. But, for now, I’ll just present the book itself.

Free to Write: Prison Voices Past and Present

Foreword by Erwin James
Edited by Gareth Creer, Hannah Priest and Tamsin Spargo

Blurb:

“The Free to Write Project has demonstrated that the long, rich and resilient tradition of writing in prison is as vital and vibrant as ever. The poems and narratives withing these pages tell us of lives that are valuable and resilient.” – Erwin James

Free to Write introduces new writing by prisoners as well as true stories of how writing helped men and women of the past imagine a better future after prison.

It is the outcome of a practical research project run by Liverpool John Moores University’s Centre for Writing and Research Centre for Literature and Cultural History.

Essays by Tamsin Spargo, Helen Rogers, Hannah Priest and Adam Creed.

Poetry and prose from HMP Shrewsbury, HMP Frankland, HMP Styal, HMP Lancaster Farms and HMP Greenock.

Contents:

Editors’ Note by Gareth Creer, Hannah Priest and Tamsin Spargo

Foreword by Erwin James

Free to Learn? Reading and Writing in the Early Nineteenth-Century Prison by Helen Rogers

Mountain Bughouse 216: One Prisoner’s Writing as Protest and Escape by Tamsin Spargo

Free to Write: Prison Voices by Hannah Priest

Prison Voices: Present (Poetry and prose from HMP Shrewsbury, HMP Frankland, HMP Styal, HMP Lancaster Farms and HMP Greenock with commentary by Adam Creed)

For more information about the book, please contact the publisher.

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