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Solitary Confinement

Books and Art

Solitary Confinement Sarah Shroud

Virtual performances of The BOX in October set the stage for deeper conversations on solitary confinement and mass incarceration. 

Playwright Sarah Shourd, a survivor of Solitary Confinement, wrote The BOX in collaboration with other survivors, including actor Dameion Brown, who starred in the show. Based on a three-year investigation by Shroud into the horrors of solitary Confinement, The BOX is a piece of transformational theatre that asks us to rexamine long-held notions of punishment.

Dutch Simmons Solitary Confinement

Bryan Washington, guest judge for our 2020 short story contest, is always on the lookout for stories displaying "a keen sense of place and a palpable intimacy"

Dutch Simmons answers that call with "Solitary" the first of four contest finalists we'll publish throughout October. The place is a 9-by-6 cell in solitary confinement "the prison within the prison," and the intimacy comes via the first-person perspective of a man with nothing to do but pace and think during the day and sleep "on a metal slab, like a cadaver" at night, "guilt...my blanket." - David Duhr, fiction editor.

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