$25
PEN’s Prison Writing Program at Breakout: Voices from Inside - 3rd Annual Fundraiser and Raffle
w/ Talib Kweli , Junot Díaz , Lisa Dierbeck , Wahida Clark and Wally Lamb
w/ Talib Kweli , Junot Díaz , Lisa Dierbeck , Wahida Clark and Wally Lamb
Mon., November 01, 2010 / 6:30 PM
Audio / Video
Gallery
About This Event
Minimum Age:
All AgesDoors Open:
6:30 PMShow Time:
7:00 PMDescription:
PEN Members and friends read the award-winning work from PEN’s Prison Writing Program at Breakout: Voices from Inside. Ticket sales will raise much-needed funds to ensure that our important program can continue its mission into the future. The event will feature readings, along with a raffle. Win prizes including a yoga class cards, as well as classes at Murray’s Cheese and spa sessions and more!
For more than 30 years, PEN’s Prison Writing program has been on the front-lines of prison reform, helping inmates in federal, state and local penitentiaries cope with life behind bars, gain skills and have a voice while they are imprisoned. Our program is essential, as the United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world, with nearly 2.5 million people incarcerated as of 2007; 70% of whom are non-white. PEN’s Prison Writing Program accomplishes its extraordinary work through one-on-one mentorships and an annual writing competition that receives between 20-30 entries per day—including from prisoners on death row.
On Monday, November 1, you can support PEN’s efforts to helping incarcerated men and women cope with life behind bars and to see themselves in a new way: as writers. All of us at PEN – and the men and women on the inside whose work will hear – hope to see you at this very important event.
With nearly 2.5 million people incarcerated in the United States as of 2007, 70% of whom are non-white, PEN’s Prison Writing Program has never been more essential or relevant. For over 30 years, PEN has accomplished extraordinary work through one-on-one mentorships and an annual writing competition that receives between 20–30 entries per day—including from prisoners on death row. Now is your chance to help out!
The event will also feature a raffle offering the chance to win a variety of prizes, including:
• $300 Membership to Le Poisson Rouge
• Tickets to The David Letterman Show
• Tickets to A Free Man of Color at Lincoln Center Theatre
• Tickets to Brief Encounter at Roundabout Theatre Company
• Cheese 101 Class from Murray’s Cheese
• Subscriptions to AGNI, The Paris Review, and Glimmer Train
More prizes will be added. Purchase raffle tickets at the event.
VIP(seated) tickets $75
General Admission(standing)+ donation tickets $50
General Admission $25
For more than 30 years, PEN’s Prison Writing program has been on the front-lines of prison reform, helping inmates in federal, state and local penitentiaries cope with life behind bars, gain skills and have a voice while they are imprisoned. Our program is essential, as the United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world, with nearly 2.5 million people incarcerated as of 2007; 70% of whom are non-white. PEN’s Prison Writing Program accomplishes its extraordinary work through one-on-one mentorships and an annual writing competition that receives between 20-30 entries per day—including from prisoners on death row.
On Monday, November 1, you can support PEN’s efforts to helping incarcerated men and women cope with life behind bars and to see themselves in a new way: as writers. All of us at PEN – and the men and women on the inside whose work will hear – hope to see you at this very important event.
With nearly 2.5 million people incarcerated in the United States as of 2007, 70% of whom are non-white, PEN’s Prison Writing Program has never been more essential or relevant. For over 30 years, PEN has accomplished extraordinary work through one-on-one mentorships and an annual writing competition that receives between 20–30 entries per day—including from prisoners on death row. Now is your chance to help out!
The event will also feature a raffle offering the chance to win a variety of prizes, including:
• $300 Membership to Le Poisson Rouge
• Tickets to The David Letterman Show
• Tickets to A Free Man of Color at Lincoln Center Theatre
• Tickets to Brief Encounter at Roundabout Theatre Company
• Cheese 101 Class from Murray’s Cheese
• Subscriptions to AGNI, The Paris Review, and Glimmer Train
More prizes will be added. Purchase raffle tickets at the event.
VIP(seated) tickets $75
General Admission(standing)+ donation tickets $50
General Admission $25
Artists
PEN’s Prison Writing Program at Breakout: Voices from Inside - 3rd Annual Fundraiser and Raffle
Talib Kweli
Talib Kweli is a rapper from Brooklyn, New York. He is one of the most prominent rappers in underground hip-hop, and is critically acclaimed frequently, despite not being incredibly commercially successful. His name is Arabic, meaning ‘the seeker’ or ‘student of truth and knowledge’. His parents were both college professors: his mother an English professor, his father a sociology professor. As a youth, he was drawn to Afrocentric rappers, such as De La Soul(LA LE LU) and other members of the Native Tongues Posse and soon began recording with producer Hi-Tek and rapper Mos Def who he met at central park, and later attended New York University with. With Mos Def (together the pair were known as Black Star), Kweli achieved some mainstream success with the eponymously titled album Black Star. (1998) While Mos Def went on to a solo career. Also noted are Talib and Mos Def’s central input on the Rawkus Records CD SoundBombing (1997) which includes a great mix of rappers linked together on the CD mixed by ‘Evil Dee’, Kweli released the Hi Tek-produced Reflection Eternal in 2000, which sold better than most alternative hip hop albums at the time. He has since released a critically acclaimed solo debut, Quality, in 2002. In 2004, Kweli released his second solo album, The Beautiful Struggle, which features production more akin to commercial rap, while Kweli’s lyrical content retains its powerful social-political content. His third solo album Ear Drum was released on August 21st, 2007 on Warner Bros./Blacksmith Music.
Junot Díaz
Junot Díaz is the winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His fiction has been published in The New Yorker and The Paris Review, and four times in The Best American Short Stories. His critically praised, bestselling debut book, Drown, led to his inclusion among Newsweek’s “New Faces of 1996” – the only writer in the group. The New Yorker placed him on a list of the twenty top writers for the twenty-first century. Born in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic, and raised there and in New Jersey, Díaz graduated from Rutgers and received an MFA from Cornell. He lives in New York City and Boston, and is a tenured professor at MIT.
Lisa Dierbeck
Lisa Dierbeck is the author of the critically acclaimed novel One Pill Makes You Smaller,
published by Farrar Straus & Giroux, translated internationally, and selected as a
New York Times Notable Book. Her fiction and nonfiction have been published in numerous
literary journals and anthologies. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee whose public speaking
engagements have included radio and television, she contributes frequently to magazines.
Dierbeck has written on assignment for such periodicals as Elle, Glamour, The New York Observer, The New York Times Book Review, People, and O, The Oprah Magazine.
Dierbeck has written on assignment for such periodicals as Elle, Glamour, The New York Observer, The New York Times Book Review, People, and O, The Oprah Magazine.
Wahida Clark
Wahida Clark was born and raised in Trenton, New Jersey. She decided to start writing fiction while incarcerated at a women's federal camp in Lexington, KY. Her style is street, raw, and she has an imagination that's in overdrive. When you read her novels they are so real you are convinced of one of three things: that you are inside the book, you know the characters, or you just have to meet them. Her first novel, Thugs And The Women Who Love Them and the sequel, Every Thug Needs A Lady appeared on the Essence Best Sellers List.
Wally Lamb
Wally Lamb is the author of three previous novels, most recently The Hour I First Believed.
She’ s Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True both topped the New York Times bestseller
list and were selections of Oprah’ s Book Club. Lamb edited Couldn’ t Keep It to Myself and I’ ll
Fly Away, two volumes of essays from students in his writing workshop at York Correctional
Institution, a women’ s prison where he has been a volunteer facilitator for the past ten years.
Lamb and his wife Christine live in Connecticut and are the parents of three sons.