The Truthout Center for Grassroots Journalism is proud to announce the winners of the fourth annual Keeley Schenwar Memorial Essay Prize. The Keeley Schenwar Memorial Essay Prize, awarded to two people who are currently or formerly incarcerated, for essays related to imprisonment or policing, is given in memory of Keeley Schenwar (1990-2020), who was a devoted mother, daughter, sister, friend, writer and advocate for incarcerated mothers. Each year, the selected essays share some of the spirit in which Keeley Schenwar moved in the world (and wrote her own work), a spirit of empathy, vulnerability and resistance. Each winner receives $3,000 and publication in Truthout.
We were honored to read hundreds of submissions this year, and were deeply moved by each one. As ever, we wish we could have selected many more winners, and are so grateful to have had the chance to engage with this work.
In addition to members of the Truthout team, we are thankful for our additional guest judge Colette Payne, a winner of the 2022 prize.
The 2024 winners are Kaylene Albuquerque, author of “My Miscarriage Behind Bars Showed Me the Truth of the ‘Justice’ System,” and I.B. Peaceful, author of “Our Future Generations Deserve Abundance, Not ‘State of the Art’ Prisons.”
Kaylene Albuquerque’s essay, “My Miscarriage Behind Bars Showed Me the Truth of the ‘Justice’ System,”describes the author’s experience of miscarrying while incarcerated at the age of 15. This piece shows, in stark detail, the way in which the system abandons and punishes pregnant incarcerated people — including pregnant youth. Albuquerque writes of her suffocating relationship with the “four white walls… holding me back from freedom,” and states, “Incarceration did not recognize me as a being who could feel pain, who could feel loss. I write this to reclaim my humanity.”
I.B. Peaceful’s essay, “Our Future Generations Deserve Abundance, Not ‘State of the Art’ Prisons,” takes on a timely subject: the impending shutdown of two Illinois prisons, and the state’s plans to rebuild them as supposedly “better” prisons. Peaceful, who writes under a pseudonym due to concerns about retaliation, condemns the state’s proposal to build new sites of incarceration based on population projections, demanding that we imagine non-carceral futures for Black, brown, and poor young people. “I plead for the next generation, who will witness more money and resources invested in two prisons than will ever be invested in their survival,” Peaceful writes.
Congratulations to this year’s authors! We are filled with overwhelming gratitude for the work of all who submitted essays, and for the daily work of all writers and organizers behind bars. And we dream of a day when there are no incarcerated writers — a day when the caging of human beings is a thing of the past.
If you are moved to support this program, you can donate toward the Keeley Schenwar Memorial Essay Prize here. Please send a note to support@truthout.org afterward letting us know the contribution is for the prize.
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