Be a PENtor

This is the story of how I became a mentor:
Once upon a time, Michael and I were sitting in my sun room and I told him that one day I wanted to teach creative writing in a prison. I had gotten the idea from a budhist nun, who came to my mom's house for Thanksgiving. I was reading The Things They Carried and thinking about how stories can heal. And here was this nun telling me about how much she loved teaching poetry to prisoners. ("Best, most appreciative, most talented class I've ever taught," she said. "They are literaly a captive audience.") A few years later, I rent What I Want my Words to Do to You with Eve Ensler (of Vagina Monologues fame) and I was sold. Then I meet Michael and you wonderful people. Michael tells me about the PEN Prison Writing Program. I contact them, they send me a story and a name (I'll call my guy Donnie because he was my favorite New Kid). So I give Donnie feedback and he gives me more stories. I get to feel humbled. He gets feedback from a twerp. We both feel pretty good about it, I think.

The thing is, they only have 17 mentors right now and they have scores of prisoners who write award winning stories. So if you are interested in learning a little something about the program go here. You can read several award winning stories (one of which is written by my mentee). If you want the nitty gritty on mentoring go here.

If you like the idea send an email to Liesel Tarquini at prisonwriting@pen.org.