Freedom Collective: Poems from the UCSP Creative Writing Workshop, Spring 2024

Freedom Collective gathers poetry written by ten women incarcerated at the California Institution for Women, produced through the Spring 2024 Creative Writing Workshop of the University of California Sentencing Project (UCSP). Across haiku, free verse, and “I Am From” pieces, the collection moves through love and its failures, addiction and recovery, motherhood and its loss, identity, isolation, and the long work of healing inside prison walls. Several poems also confront California’s history of coerced sterilization of incarcerated women, turning documented harm into testimony.

The ten contributors write with unusual candor about what a shared collective statement in the zine describes as the truths too raw for a daily mask: grief, desire, rage, tenderness, and survival.

The workshop was facilitated by Rosie Stockton and produced in partnership with the UC Sentencing Project, the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, and the UCLA Center for the Study of Women/Barbra Streisand Center.

The zine was designed by Kaya Napachoti.

Description

• Title: Freedom Collective: Poems from the UCSP Creative Writing Workshop
• Subtitle/series note: Spring 2024
• Creator(s)/Author(s): Darea Rowens, Gladys Johnson, Mindy Jones, Zabel Kazanjian, Elijah León, Victoria Martinez, Kinzie Gene Noordman, C. Ramirez, Reneé Soto-Ramirez, Venessa Voyles
• Editor/Facilitator: Rosie Stockton (workshop facilitator)
• Contributing organization(s): University of California Sentencing Project (UCSP), UCLA Center for the Study of Women|Barbra Streisand Center, California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP)
• Designer: Kaya Napachoti
• Research stream members: Jane Dorotik, Mindy Jones, Ayesha Waraich
• Date of publication/creation: Spring 2024
• Pagination: 68 pages
• Language: English

Subject 

• Genre: zine; poetry chapbook; prison literature; incarcerated writers’ anthology
• Subjects: Women prisoners  — Poetry; Prisoners’ writings, American; Creative writing — Study and teaching — Corrections — California; Restorative justice

Provenance / Copyright

• Associated program: UCSP Creative Writing Workshop
• Copyright held by authors.

Content Note 

Content warning note: the zine addresses addiction, suicide, sterilization abuse, domestic violence, and sexual trauma.