Prison Writing and the Literary World

Prison Writing and the Literary World tackles international prison writing

and writing about imprisonment in relation to questions of literary representation

and formal aesthetics, the “value” or “values” of literature,

textual censorship and circulation, institutional networks and literary-critical

methodologies. It offers scholarly essays exploring prison writing

in relation to wartime internment, political imprisonment, resistance and

independence creation, regimes of terror, and personal narratives of development

and awakening that grapple with race, class and gender. Cutting

across geospatial divides while drawing on nation- and region-specific expertise,

it asks readers to connect the questions, examples and challenges

arising from prison writing and writing about imprisonment within the

UK and the USA, but also across continental Europe, Stalinist Russia, the

Americas, Africa and the Middle East. It also includes critical reflection

pieces from authors, editors, educators and theatre practitioners with experience

of the fraught, testing and potentially inspiring links between prison

and the literary world.