Tag: PEN America award

• Courage

  This piece of writing placed second in the 2024 PEN America Prison Writing Awards. Courage I don’t remember the Mexican kid’s name anymore but I do remember his age which was 18. He looked young, younger than 18 although he carried himself like a man much older. Let me clarify, he was young and stupid…

  Robert Hiraeth

  4th October 2025

  Short Fiction

  award-winning writing, character study, complicity, contemporary nonfiction, creative nonfiction, criminal justice, first person narrative, incarceration, institutional violence, jail culture, literary nonfiction, masculinity and violence, moral complexity, PEN America award, PEN Prison Writing Award 2024, power dynamics, prison literature, prison writing, survival, witness