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.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We’re presently working to find 1500 new monthly donors to Truthout before the end of the year.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy