Join us in the CPL Zoom room on Wednesday, May 21, from 6-7:30pm PST for a panel on spontaneous composition, community building, and how postcard poems can bring those two things together! In this panel/workshop, we will be partnering with Free Time, a “volunteer program focused on correspondence with writers who are incarcerated, offering support and mentorship, and building relationships one letter at a time,” to send postcards to incarcerated poets. We will discuss more opportunities to work more closely with Free Time, and you will hear from seasoned Postcard Poets and poets who have worked closely with incarcerated writers: Katie Sarah Zale, Matt Trease, Judy Kleinberg, and Paul Nelson. We will have a panel discussion for an hour touching on these themes, followed by a half an hour of community writing.

If you have not yet registered for the 2025 Poetry Postcard Fest, you can register for the Incarcerated Poets writing workshop HERE. If you are already registered for PPF 2025, CLICK HERE to contact us and receive the Zoom link.

Kwaneta Harris

Winter in America (Again features work from Kwaneta Harris, a former nurse and incarcerated journalist in Texas. You can learn about Kwaneta’s experience as a woman, nurse and writer in incarceration through her piece in Rolling Stone and This American Life. Below is a video of Winter in America (Again co-editor Katie Sarah Zale reading Kwaneta’s piece from the anthology. Through programs like Free Time, incarcerated individuals like Kwaneta share their stories, build connections and gain new experiences, and people on the outside are able to get to know people outside of their community and more deeply understand the conditions of incarceration in the United States. We are honored to be able to feature Kwaneta’s work and collaborate with Free Time to open our doors to incarcerated poets and learn more about their experiences.