This is the sixth installment in a weekly series by Dianna Marder about her volunteer work with prisoners serving life sentences in a local prison.  Read the whole series here.

Three more of the lifers took me up on my offer to read/critique other stories they’ve written outside of class – recently or in the past.  I’m hoping we can post those on a separate page on this, the First Person Arts website. The men so very much want to be known as they are now – as people changed for the better by incarceration.

Also, I read Incorrigible, a memoir by inmate Pat Middleton, who is now a lifer at Graterford. Pat’s page-turner was published in 2008 by the Swarthmore, Pa-based group Sage Writers and is featured at www.sagewriters.org. The book, which he considers to be his volume one, ends with his escape from a federal penitentiary. He’s working on the sequel. I won’t spoil your reading pleasure other than to say this one’s a must read.

- dianna marder