Full Description
Literary Journalism Goes Inside Prison: Just Sentences opens up a new exploration of literary journalism - immersive, long-form journalism so beautifully written that it can stand as literature - in the first anthology to examine literary journalism and prison.
In this book, a wide range of compelling subjects are considered. These include Nelson Mandela and other prisoners of apartheid; the made-in-prison podcast Ear Hustle; women's experiences of life behind bars; Behrouz Boochani's 2018 bestseller No Friend but the Mountains; George Orwell's artful writing on incarceration; Pete Earley's immersion into the largest prison in the United States, The Hot House; Arthur Koestler and the Spanish Civil War; Ted Conover's year as a prison guard in Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing and (most originally) Bruce Springsteen's execution narrative Nebraska.
This volume will benefit anyone who writes, studies or teaches any form of narrative nonfiction. Eleven international scholars articulate what makes the work they are analysing so exceptional. At the same time, they offer insights on a diverse range of vital topics. These include journalism ethics, journalism and trauma, media history, cultural studies, criminology and social justice.
Contents
Introduction: Intimate Understanding through Profound Immersion
Part 1
Nothing Barred: How Reporting Can Humanise the Criminal 'Other'
1. On Death Row: Giving Voice to Apartheid's Forgotten Prisoners
2. 'Feeling the Facts': Literary Journalism, Colonialism and Behrouz Boochani's
No Friend but the Mountains
3. 'We Risked a Whole Newspaper': Thami Mkhwanazi's Robben Island Series
and the Weekly Mail
Part 2
Fully Inside? The Challenges of 'Immersion' Reporting
4. Writing from the Inside: First-Person Reportage of Prison Life by the Incarcerated
5. The Sorry Places: Cristina Rathbone's A World Apart
6. The Architecture of Immersive Writing: Sites of (Self-)Scrutiny in Ted Conover's Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing
7. The Hot House: Reporting and Writing Strategies to Navigate Deep Immersion
Part 3
Breaking Out: Exploring Diverse Definitions for Literary Journalism
8. Dialogues with Death: Fact, Fiction and the Many Adaptations of Arthur Koestler's Prison Narrative
9. George Orwell: Making Writing on Prisons 'An Art'
10. Ear Hustle: Connecting to Prison Life Through a Narrative Podcast
11. Bruce Springsteen's 'Reportorial Story Songs' - Grace and Kinship on Death Row
Afterword: Journalists' Many Creative Ways of Covering the Correctional System
