Writing Beyond the Prison Living Archive

Writing is more than simply the production of the written word as a final product. Rather, it is a process that involves successive stages of creation and conceptualization, organization, expression, reflection, and self-realization that can be truly transformative. When shared with the wider world, writing moves beyond an act of individual consciousness and self-expression to become a communal exchange that creates knowledge, compassion, empathy, recognition of shared conditions, and analysis of social dilemmas. A deep belief in the transformative power of writing was the driving force in the creation of “Writing Beyond the Prison,” and it is the impetus for sharing these writings by incarcerated authors.

ABOUT
With support from a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), a team of faculty and graduate students at SBU worked closely with the United Black Family Scholarship Foundation (UBFSF) to edit over 100 manuscripts by incarcerated authors, a sampling of which is included in this collection. These writings, and many more to come, will be preserved in this ever-expanding, open-access “Living Archive” at Stony Brook University, where the collection is available for use by scholars, teachers, activists, and policymakers. The ACLS grant also supported Herstory in adapting its unique, empathy-based memoir writing curriculum to an online format (Herstory Beyond Bars) for use in carceral settings behind and beyond bars. Our interactive website Writing Beyond the Prison places writings by incarcerated and system-impacted individuals in cultural, historical, and pedagogical contexts.

TERMS OF USE
All materials in this collection are copyrighted in the United States. Release forms to make this collection accessible as an educational resource have been signed by the authors. The author retains rights to their work; thus, each item in the collection has been given the rights statement IN COPYRIGHT. Visit RightsStatements.org for further information on correct usage of items in this collection.

All contributors signed a release form assigning Stony Brook University Libraries the rights to publication, usage, and disposition of the submission(s). It grants Stony Brook University Libraries the right to organize the materials, to create metadata and full-text search interfaces required for the preservation and discovery of the material, and to make the materials accessible to researchers.

Please contact the administrator of this repository at openaccess@stonybrook.edu for any requests regarding this collection.

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