FACULTY NEWS | October 24, 2018
Mitchell S. Jackson
Photo: John Ricard
PEN America has named Professor Mitchell S. Jackson one of its inaugural Writing For Justice Fellows. Participants were selected for the year-long Writing for Justice Fellowship for having conceptualized writing projects that illuminate critical issues related to mass incarceration and catalyze public debate. The cohort is comprised of ten emerging and established writers, including members who are currently and formerly incarcerated.
Jackson will work on Survival Files, a multimedia project of portrait photography and prose that exposes the often tenuous biographical distinctions between those working within, and those who’ve become wards of, the criminal justice system. He will be working with photographer and multimedia creator Bayeté Ross Smith.
Additionally, Professor Jackson serves as a committee member on the National Book Foundation’s Literature for Justice program, a campaign that seeks to contextualize and humanize the experiences of incarcerated people through literature of different genres.