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.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
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