To My Big Sis, Judith Tannenbaum, from Spoon Jackson

by Spoon Jackson My love for my mentor and big sis, Judith. I know death is rising over the mountains, slowly, and the pain must be enormous. Yet Judith finds and creates beauty and peace even in the midst of a hurricane. She transforms in the middle of death. Judith has been dealing with great …

Continue reading To My Big Sis, Judith Tannenbaum, from Spoon Jackson

Meeting the Woman, Not the Crime

by Peggy Lamb About the guest blogger: Peggy Lamb organizes Truth Be Told’s Exploring Creativity program. Truth Be Told is an Austin, TX based non-profit organization that provides transformational programs for women who are or have been incarcerated. Exploring Creativity classes use expressive arts to enlarge the women’s sense of themselves, release pain and express despair …

Continue reading Meeting the Woman, Not the Crime

I Wanted To Remind Us We Were People

by Elana Pritchard About the guest blogger: Elana Pritchard is a cartoonist in Los Angeles.  Before she landed in jail she worked as an animator on Ralph Bakshi's film, Last Days of Coney Island.  She is currently doing a Kickstarter to finish her animated cartoon, The Circus: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/341471863/the-circus It's been about a week since the …

Continue reading I Wanted To Remind Us We Were People

If I Didn’t Tell Them…

Toni McConnel I started writing stories about my experiences as a prisoner about ten years after I got out of the federal penitentiary for women in Alderson, West Virginia.  Among many intense motivations for writing my experiences was the feeling that the women I had known in various jails and prisons would never have a …

Continue reading If I Didn’t Tell Them…