Ebook: Writing Our Way Out: Memoirs from Jail

Writing Our Way Out is a memoir of teaching a writing class to prisoners. And it’s ten prisoners’ memoirs written with this hope in mind: that each man might understand the story of his life and in so doing change its course.

Detailing the formative and transformative stories of memoirs of ten men, Writing Our Way Out is the creative culmination of a writing class that began at the Richmond City Jail in Virginia in 2006 and grew into a journey to reentry. Compiled in a narrative by their teacher, Dr. David Coogan, these stories explore the conditions, traps, and turning points on the path to imprisonment in modern America, as well as the redemptive power of memoir.