Writing has long been a cornerstone of our program. Be it academic or creative, CPEP has seen this form of expression as critical to the learning and development of our students. Our students agree. Writing is largely embraced by our learners who seek out every opportunity to be heard.
Our students understand the value of this form of expression. At a reading event for our published anthology of student work, one of our authors was absent because it was his day of release. He left this message to be read on his behalf.
If you have an issue accessing this document, please email cpep@cornell.edu
Published Student Writing
The Human Side of Us: Writings from Students of the Cornell Prison Education Program is the product of nearly two years of work and advocacy. This October we will be holding a reading event at Auburn Correctional Facility. This will be a chance for our student authors to read their work to an audience of their peers, CPEP staff, instructors and volunteers, DOCCS administrators and other VIPs from across the state. We are incredibly excited to celebrate this achievement with our students and hope to be able to hold a similar event at Cayuga later this fall with their authors.
If you have an issue accessing this document, please email cpep@cornell.edu
Shakespeare In The Age Of Mass Incarceration Is a new anthology that explores how Shakespeare is taught, performed, and experienced within prison environments—through the eyes of both instructors and incarcerated students. Drawing from college-in-prison programs across the country, the collection highlights the transformative potential of engaging with Shakespeare in the classroom and on stage.
We are proud to share that the anthology includes a chapter by CPEP students Julio Iglesias and Chester “Al” Wood, along with CPEP instructor and outgoing advisory board member Dr. Stephen Kim. Dr. Kim worked and wrote alongside Julio and Al for about a year following a class he taught on Shakespeare, which both students excelled in. The project represents the culmination of a three-year collaboration that navigated the challenges of working across correctional programs nationwide.
Writer’s Bloc
Writer’s Bloc literary journal was started by Rahul Desai (’10) and Julia Woodward (’10) – both Teaching Assistants for the Cornell Prison Education Program (CPEP), with the intent of providing CPEP students with an outlet for their talents and the campus population a lens to their counterparts’ vision and abilities. They begun the literary journal with this fundamental idea: writing is an outlet and it is a deeply personal expression of self, and as such, it should be given an opportunity to be heard.
The first volume of Writer’s Bloc was published during the 2009-10 academic year. Rahul Desai and Esther Kwan (’11) donated the proceeds of their winning Cornell’s Robinson-Appel Humanitarian Award to continue publication of Writer’s Bloc 2010-2011.
From the Writer’s Bloc website of 2011:
We hope that the Writer’s Bloc literary journal will be a platform for the Auburn students to tell their stories to their audience. It is our hope that reading the work that is included in these publications will be a chapter of these students’ experiences for you, a look into life inside Auburn, and a taste of the work that the volunteers of the Cornell Prison Education Program commit themselves to every week of the semester.
Esther and Adina Rubin-Budick (’13) established the eponymous Writer’s Bloc student organization on campus to promote incarcerated peoples’ self-expression and to educate the general population about incarceration.
Shane Kalb took over as President of the student organization in Fall 2013, and the current website and online archive was posted in December 2013.
