As a proud member of the Prison Journalism Project (PJP), I am elated to announce myself as one of a handful of PJP writers selected to participate in an unprecedented, advanced nonfiction writing workshop led by Bill Keller and co-instructed by Shaheen Pasha.
Bill Keller worked at The New York Times for 30 years as a correspondent, editor and op-ed columnist. He was the founding editor of The Marshall Project. He has taught journalism seminars at Princeton University, as well as at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York (briefly, until the COVID shutdown). He is the author of “What’s Prison For?” published in October 2022.
Shaheen Pasha is co-founder and chief education officer of Prison Journalism Project. She is an assistant teaching professor at Penn State University and a veteran journalist with over 20 years of experience at news outlets such as CNN and Thomson Reuters. She has extensive experience teaching incarcerated students throughout the country.
The correspondence-based course consists of 12 learning modules and is expected to start any day.
One of roughly eleven PJP writers invited to apply for the course, an excerpt from my application letter describe what this means to me:
I expect by participating in a nonfiction writing workshop that every aspect of my operation, upon completion, would stand to benefit.
Were I to be accepted, I would enter into it having never participated in similar writing coursework. Thus I would expect to come away from it with several improved techniques for collecting and examining data, as well as for creating drafts and outlines and linking critical concepts. By paying close attention to teaching techniques, communication styles and the level of difficulty at which the course progresses, I would also expect to later reinvest the benefits I myself achieve into those who express an interest in learning from me personally.
In the months I’ve been counted among PJP writers, I’ve been able to spend what I would consider a significant amount of time speaking with an editor and also messaging with multiple members of staff to improve upon and ensure the quality of two accepted submissions; one of which I sent in unsolicited, the other written on request and submitted on a deadline. Beyond realizing that my work required additional layers of scrutiny and that I could, in many ways, do more to lead the reader down a smoother, informative path, I’ve learned to trust the processes and the people that make this project work and to give them my best effort without stressing too much on the outcome.
If accepted, I am prepared to prioritize every component of this workshop above all other pursuits and self-imposed obligations–including, if needed, the production of my newsletter–and fully apply myself to every lesson and assignment.
Upon completing this workshop, I plan to express my gratitude to PJP staff, writers and donors by performing to the best of my ability and paying it forward however I can.