It’s known as the Pulitzers of prison journalism. The American Penal Press Contest celebrates the work of incarcerated writers.
NBC Bay Area’s Jessica Aguirre went inside the Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) in Chowchilla to visit one of the newsrooms taking part in the national contest.
CCWF is one of two women’s prisons in California. It is the largest women’s prison in the state and houses more than 2,000 incarcerated. Inside the vast facility are some 300 programs designed to rehabilitate and educate the women on the inside for a future on the outside.
One of the programs is a media room with a working newsroom. It’s where the newspaper Paper Trail is produced. It is an eight-page monthly newspaper.
Amber Bray is editor-in-chief. She’s been incarcerated for nearly 30 years.
“We’re the first incarcerated women’s publication in the nation to have a syndicated publication that is available on a global scale,” she said.
Bray is nominated in the American Penal Press Contest. The contest was held for 25 years and ended in 1990. This year, nonprofit Pollen Institute re-launched the contest with its original host, Southern Illinois University. There were 179 submissions from 21 prison newspapers across nine states.
Kate McQueen is the editorial director at Pollen Institute.
“The American Penal Press Contest is sort of like the Pulitzer Prize behind bars,” she said. “There are individual awards, like for the best story in sports or local news coverage, best photojournalism, best op-ed…we thought it would be really, really helpful to bring it back, to help newsrooms across the state of California and even across the U.S. get attention that they wouldn’t otherwise get.”
McQueen and Jesse Vasquez are advisors. They drive twice a week to Chowchilla from the Bay Area to guide these women through the publishing process. Vasquez knows his way around a prison newspaper. He spent nearly 20 years in maximum security level facilities before ending up in San Quentin. He was editor-in-chief of the San Quentin News.
“When I was editor-in-chief, I used to get mail from the women’s facilities all the time…incarcerated women asking incarcerated men for assistance thinking that we were a little bit more privileged than they were because we had a prison publication,” Vasquez said. “The intention was to give just a platform and some space to actually share their stories.”
Winners for the American Penal Press Contest will be announced Friday, Sept. 19 during a closed ceremony at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center. The event will be streamed live to newsrooms inside the Department of Corrections.
Source: NBC Bay Area
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