You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
In 1884, the first of 68 prisoners convicted of terrorism and revolutionary activity were transferred to a new maximum security prison at Shlissel´burg Fortress near St Petersburg. The regime of indeterminate sentences in isolation caused severe mental and physical deterioration among the prisoners, over half of whom died. But the survivors fought back to reform the prison and improve the inmates’ living conditions. The memoirs many survivors wrote enshrined their story in revolutionary mythology, and acted as an indictment of the Tsarist autocracy’s loss of moral authority. Writing Resistance features three of these memoirs, all translated into English for the first time. They show the...
Koestler Platinum Award Winner (judged by author and comedian Will Self). As Frankie Owens writes in The Little Book of Prison (LBP), Society wants to know about prison life, an interesting place to visit but you wouldn't want to live there. --An easy-to-read prison survival guide of do's and don'ts. --Perfect for anyone facing trial for an offence that may lead to imprisonment, their families and friends --Packed with humour as well as more serious items --Backed by prisoner support organizations --Straightforward and highly entertaining. Frankie started writing the LBP from day two of entering prison as a first-time offender. He had no idea how the system or a prison worked. He was clueles...
A collection of writing by people in prison and connected to prisons: creative and challenging - one of two special Waterside Press editions. 'A remarkable anthology which will interest everyone concerned with the fate of prisoners and anxious to see their conditions improved': Michael McMullan, Justice of the Peace. 'This fascinating and very readable collection of fact, fiction and verse is the fifteenth issue edited and produced by two probation officers from Sheffield. We are fortunate that they have found a new publisher in Waterside Press to continue giving prisoners (and others), an opportunity to do something wich all writers crave - find an audience to communicate their feelings and experiences... The contributors give deeply personal insights into the nature of their world and prove that imagination and talent are incapable of being destroyed if people are ready to develop them... This anthology deserves to be read... by everyone who is interested in new writers experimenting with the development of their talent. Each piece is different and compelling: David Underhill, The Magistrate.
Eleven-year-old Harrison Opoku, the second best runner in Year 7, races through his new life in England with his personalised trainers - the Adidas stripes drawn on with marker pen - blissfully unaware of the very real threat around him. Newly-arrived from Ghana with his mother and older sister Lydia, Harri absorbs the many strange elements of city life, from the bewildering array of Haribo sweets, to the frightening, fascinating gang of older boys from his school. But his life is changed forever when one of his friends is murdered. As the victim's nearly new football boots hang in tribute on railings behind fluorescent tape and a police appeal draws only silence, Harri decides to act, unwittingly endangering the fragile web his mother has spun around her family to keep them safe.
The Native American activist recounts his evolution into a political organizer, his trial and conviction for murder, and his spiritual journey in prison. In September of 2022, twenty-five years after Leonard Peltier received a life sentence for the murder of two FBI agents, the Democratic National Committee unanimously passed a resolution urging President Joe Biden to release him. Peltier has affirmed his innocence ever since his sentencing in 1977—his case was made fully and famously in Peter Matthiessen’s bestselling In the Spirit of Crazy Horse—and many remain convinced he was wrongly convicted. A wise and unsettling book, Prison Writings is both memoir and manifesto, chronicling Pe...
Reviews of the previous edition: 'A remarkable anthology wich will interest everyone concerned with the fate of prisoners and anxious to see their conditions improved': Michael McMullan, Justice of the Peace. 'This fascinating and very readable collection of fact, fiction and verse is the fifteenth issue edited and produced by two probation officers from Sheffield. We are fortunate that they have found a new publisher in Waterside Press to continue giving prisoners (and others), an opportunity to do something wich all writers crave - find an audience to communicate their feelings and experiences... The contributors give deeply personal insights into the nature of their world and prove that imagination and talent are incapable of being destroyed if people are ready to develop them... This anthology deserves to be read... by everyone who is interested in new writers experimenting with the development of their talent. Each piece is different and compelling: David Underhill, The Magistrate. This 16th edition is an entirely new collection of writings by prisoners and other people connected with prisons, from the United Kingdom and beyond.
I am not innocent. I committed the one offense that includes all others.
John Healy's The Grass Arena describes with unflinching honesty his experiences of addiction, his escape through learning to play chess in prison, and his ongoing search for peace of mind. In his searing autobiography Healy describes his fifteen years living rough in London without state aid, when begging carried an automatic three-year prison sentence and vagrant alcoholics prowled the parks and streets in search of drink or prey. When not united in their common aim of acquiring alcohol, winos sometimes murdered one another over prostitutes or a bottle, or the begging of money. Few modern writers have managed to match Healy's power to refine from the brutal destructive condition of the chronic alcoholic a story so compelling it is beyond comparison. 'Sober and precise, grotesque, violent, sad, charming and hilarious all at once' Literary Review 'Beside it, a book like Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London seems a rather inaccurate tourist guide' Colin MacCabe