Tag Archives: writing

In this episode, we have our monthly round up of prison disturbances, as compiled by Perilous Chronicle. Afterwards, we have a conversation with Sophia Johnson, also known as Candle, who is an anarchist writer who currently serving a sentence in Oregon. In this conversation, she talks about writing in prison, and her ongoing struggle to receive adequate health care.

We launch into this episode with our monthly roundup of prison disturbances, as compiled by Perilous Chronicle.  Afterwards, we have audio from a prisoner, Paul Lee, reporting on a massive transfer of inmates back in February from Pontiac, Illinois correctional facility to Centralia Correctional Center due to an ongoing black mold problem, which had been accumulating at the facility for …

(Original air date: May 19, 2020) In the United States of the 1950s there was a struggle over the very idea of what it would mean to be an American. After World War II, an American could ride high on military power and new technologies. But the Cold War and Nuclear Anxiety undermined the very real economic prosperity being experienced …

This week, we speak with two writers, Laura Lasuertmer and Wendy Lee Spacek. Spacek and Lasuertmer run a writing workshop in the local jail. They tell us about the writing program, what led them to do this project, and its impact on folks in the inside. Then, we share a selection of writings that came out of some recent sessions …

Joan Hawkins had done a lot of creative writing as a younger person, but she mostly abandoned that pursuit as she advanced in her academic career and other priorities took over. Recently she began to feel the pull to return to memoir writing. She attended an open mike night sponsored by the Writers Guild and read one of her memoir …

This week, we air part of a conversation with Brandon Ackerson, a 36-year-old survivor of an 18 year prison sentence in the Indiana prison system. Newly released, he talks about using the skills he learned and honed during life in the DOC, in which he became a successful writer while in the Indiana Prison Writers’ Workshop.

First, we have updates on the Vaughn 17 and hunger strikes and noise demonstrations from immigrant detention centers around the country. After the news, we share a conversation with Phillip Roberts and Debra Des Vignes.  Des Vignes is the founder of the Indiana Prison Writers Workshop, and Roberts participated in the project for almost a year. Roberts reads some of …

Indiana Republicans reaffirmed ‘marriage’ as the union between a man and a woman, during their state convention, on Friday; MCCSC is looking to adopt new curricula for its middle and high schools students, after racist materials in the district’s elementary schools Social Studies curriculum generated controversy, earlier this year; Monroe County and the City of Bloomington are working on how best to …

From Alexander the Great’s “pillow book” (The Iliad) to the Mayan Popul Vuh; from Gilgamesh to Harry Potter by way of Goethe and the notion of “world literature”–tonight we contemplate The Written World. World Literature is a concept first expressed by Johann Wolfgang Goethe in 1827: If we Germans do not look beyond the narrow circle of our own environment, …

“Censorship and Sensibility” features local author and film scholar Joan Hawkins in conversation with writer Laurie Stone. Stone was in town to read from her latest book as part of the Player’s Pub Spoken Word series organized by the Writers Guild at Bloomington. A longtime writer for the Village Voice, theater critic for The Nation and critic-at-large on Fresh Air, …