Purple leafless trees stand in the foreground against a vibrant purple and orange sunset sky.

Brave Irene's
c/o
521 N. Institute Street
80903

(Image: Watercolor painting of the yard at La Vista, the cover of a thank-you note, by a yearlong student in Brave Irene&#39;s courses there.)&nbsp; The Prison Lit Project offers inmates college-level craft-driven courses in the best our tradition has to offer. These courses &nbsp;introduce students to modes of writing, including, but not limited to: the Art of the Letter, Writing Picture Books for Children, Free Verse, Formal Poetry, the Short Story, the Novella, Rhetoric, the Comic Memoir, Reading the Harlem Renaissance, and the Novel. Reading comes first in this pedagogy, and students learn to write better by imitation of the astonishing and beautifully made works they read. Some classes will include a drawing component as well, as it is the founder&#39;s conviction that drawing and writing go hand in hand.&nbsp; Literacy is enfranchisement. As a country, we are losing literacy. This loss is particularly pronounced among people who are incarcerated. According to the National Literacy Institute, &quot;To determine how many prison beds will be needed in future years, some states actually base part of their projection on how well current elementary students are performing on reading tests.&quot; Through the Brave Irene&#39;s Prison Lit Project, students will be enfranchised, offered the very best of human art and ingenuity, and the means (vocabulary; craft skills, terms, and techniques; texts; rhetorical analysis) to join conversations from which they would otherwise be excluded. These courses are reading-rich, and reading-first; students learn to read for craft,&nbsp;and are often read aloud to, which is often healing, too. Crucially: these classes are a joy. Students are motivated to learn by delight.

(Image: Watercolor painting of the yard at La Vista, the cover of a thank-you note, by a yearlong student in Brave Irene's courses there.)  The Prison Lit Project offers inmates college-level craft-driven courses in the best our tradition has to offer. These courses  introduce students to modes of writing, including, but not limited to: the Art of the Letter, Writing Picture Books for Children, Free Verse, Formal Poetry, the Short Story, the Novella, Rhetoric, the Comic Memoir, Reading the Harlem Renaissance, and the Novel. Reading comes first in this pedagogy, and students learn to write better by imitation of the astonishing and beautifully made works they read. Some classes will include a drawing component as well, as it is the founder's conviction that drawing and writing go hand in hand.  Literacy is enfranchisement. As a country, we are losing literacy. This loss is particularly pronounced among people who are incarcerated. According to the National Literacy Institute, "To determine how many prison beds will be needed in future years, some states actually base part of their projection on how well current elementary students are performing on reading tests." Through the Brave Irene's Prison Lit Project, students will be enfranchised, offered the very best of human art and ingenuity, and the means (vocabulary; craft skills, terms, and techniques; texts; rhetorical analysis) to join conversations from which they would otherwise be excluded. These courses are reading-rich, and reading-first; students learn to read for craft, and are often read aloud to, which is often healing, too. Crucially: these classes are a joy. Students are motivated to learn by delight.

Brave Irene's

THE PRISON LIT PROJECT

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