The Workshop

About the prison writing workshop at the Richmond City Jail – by David Coogan

Preface

In the summer of 2006, I started a writing workshop in autobiography at the Richmond City Jail. By the spring of 2007, when I finally ended the weekly Saturday sessions, I had met close to four dozen men in a class that regularly capped at eight. Guys in their twenties rarely stuck it out for more than few sessions. Guys who only wanted to tell street stories but wouldn’t evaluate what they did and why, stuck it out a little longer but later drifted away.

Larry wrote more than anyone that summer. The week before he was released, we made plans to meet on the outside and prepare some remarks for volunteer appreciation night at Offender Aid and Restoration, the nonprofit that helped me set up the workshop. It disappointed me that he never showed up. But it confused me, seeing him walk by the classroom door three months later asking to get back into the class. Byron, an ex-biker with a Willie Nelson head voice and soap opera stories of mistaken identity—all of them revolving around the hot, young babe who got away—stayed in the class for several months, handing in thick packets of prose that he often refused to read aloud. When Ronald, ran into him at prison months later and told him he was going to write me a letter, Byron, strangely, dismissed the idea. “He probably won’t write back to me,” he told Ronald. “Well, I’m going to do it anyway,” Ron later told me when we were reunited in my office months later. There were many more Byrons than Ronalds over the years.

Mr. Coogan has been a worthy guide in this safari to track down the source of my madness. He called it creative writing, but he knew, as well as all of his colleagues, that this class was actually a murder for hire. – Stanley Craddock

Yet by the winter of 2007 a core group had emerged: Ronald Fountain, Stanley Craddock, Andre Simpson, Greg Carter, Chuck Hicks, Kelvin Belton, Naji Mujahid and Dean Turner. Their court appearances, transfers to prison and even releases came unexpectedly, making it hard to know if they were still students. They were. These were the men who kept writing after our time at the jail had come to an end, sending me drafts of their life story from prison, keeping me up to date on their progress even when they found it hard to write. These were the ones who helped expand the workshop. In prison, Kelvin encouraged Terence Scruggs to join the project. Naji Mujahid sent me Brad Greene, Kyle Brown and Tony Martin. Phase Two, the correspondence course, started that way.

Before any of these men joined the project, they had already taken the first steps toward change. All but Kyle had multiple bids under their belts. Older now, they were tired of falling, disgusted with their former selves, hungry for new life. Through their families, their religion, their prior writings or friends, they had already resolved “no more.” But they had not been challenged in any structured or group-oriented way, to narrate their lives from the cause to the effect—to reason, morally, by making a story. My ground rules were simple: keep the focus on you, as opposed to intractable issues “out there.” Write about a world you used to live in: did you make it or did it make you?

I am forever grateful to Naji, my friend, for introducing me to Dr. Coogan, who I have great respect for. He taught me to love writing, something that never came easy before. And this has been the most powerful, life-changing kind of writing, too. You have to put your sweat and blood into it. Otherwise, it’s cheating. – Brad Greene

Like any other group of writers I have ever worked with, some stumbled into insights more easily than others. And some needed more help in the telling than others. I had not anticipated becoming their editor, re-ordering, compressing, line-editing for readability. But then I had not anticipated that one day I would be walking across campus with them to meet the students in my Prison Literature class. They were the guest speakers that evening, prepared to read aloud from their work and talk about our project. We were going over the game plan when I tripped a little in the dark.

“Woah,” Dean shouted, extending an arm to catch me.

“What are you doing, Dave?” Kelvin added, grinning widely. “You can’t trip here in a dark alley with four black guys!” My lips curled up in a half smile, waiting for it.

“Cuz, if you got hurt, you know who they’d come for!” Dean finished.

“Uh-uh,” Ron chided, “they’d have four to choose from! They’d have to think on that.” Terence dropped back from the group snickering at the scene. My ground rules were simple, but playing field was uneven, and we knew that. But we also knew that a meaningful way to smooth out some common ground reason about our lives together—to share that struggle for a better life. Essentially, that’s all we have to offer.

You have to want to change. A program can only show you the necessary tools to use to assist you to fight the addiction. To some it only takes one time, but for me it would take a few more tries. All I know is that I have to do something and that by writing this I am doing something. – Andre Simpson

Watch a video essay by David Coogan

A look inside a prison writing workshop.