Free Minds Poetry Reading & Community Dialogue
Monday, March 31st at 7 p.m.
Please join us for an evening of poetry and community dialogue brought to you by Free Minds Book Club & Writing Workshop and PEN/Faulkner’s Writers in Schools program. Come hear formerly incarcerated youth share their experiences at the DC Jail and in federal prison and express their personal stories of change through poetry. A moderated discussion on the root causes of youth incarceration and community solutions will follow. By bringing everyone on the same page, we create a stronger, healthier community.
Free Minds uses books, creative writing, and peer support to awaken DC youth incarcerated as adults to their own potential. Through creative expression, job readiness training, and violence prevention outreach, these young poets achieve their education and career goals, and become powerful voices for change in the community. This mirrors the mission of PEN/Faulkner’s Writers in Schools, which works to foster an active and thoughtful next generation of readers by bringing professional writers and their recent works directly into DC classrooms for discussions about literature and life. In the past two years, Free Minds and PEN/Faulkner have teamed up to blend these two programs, bringing Free Minds writers who are home from prison into high school classrooms to read and discuss their own poetry and experiences with local students. This evening gives Free Minds and the PEN/Faulkner Foundation the opportunity to extend this work out into the broader community.
On The Same Page: Voices of Incarcerated Youth is made possible by a grant from the Capitol Hill Community Foundation.