This edited collection will address educational practices and pedagogies for teaching writing in prisons.  The collection’s framing concept argues for social and political consciousness within prison writing education that represents equal and shared learning between writers and teachers.  The collection will offer material that advocates an equalitarian pedagogy for prison writing education while exploring how writing projects can model student/teacher collaboration in order for learning to occur for both teacher and student.  More directly, how do knowledge, writing, and social activism combine in writing classrooms within a prison setting?

Essays of interest might include autobiographical discussions of learning as a result of teaching writing in prisons; pedagogical issues and methods specific to prison education; politics of teaching writing in prisons; gender and minority status in prison writing; impact of security levels on writing programs, particularly educational offerings to supermax residents; interaction of writing and performance for inmate writers; teaching different genres of writing in prison; and U.S. prison writing in languages other than English.

The editors are particularly interested in essays focused on the work and meanings of writing in prison, and the social context in which incarcerated writers pursue individual and group writing.  We invite essays from prison teachers and administrators, education volunteers, educational administration professionals, rhetoric & composition communities, and education faculty at universities. Essays from those teaching outside prisons should make clear the basis of their teaching engagement with inmate writers.  We welcome and encourage theoretical discussion, but essays should employ clear and accessible language.

Please send 250-word abstracts, or full draft manuscripts of previously unpublished material, to the co-editors no later than January 31, 2016 for consideration.  Include a 100-150 word bio.  Authors will be notified by February 15, 2016.  Where relevant for contributors from academic institutions, a copy of IRB approval must be submitted upon acceptance, and a permissions chart must be submitted with the final draft.  Final drafts of selected abstracts or manuscripts will be due on June 30, 2016. Essays should not exceed 10,000 words; bibliography in Chicago style; and 11 pt. Courier font with one inch margin.  Anticipated date of manuscript completion to be submitted to the publisher for peer review is planned forDecember 1, 2016. Revisions will be required in early fall of 2016. This volume is under consideration by a major university press; however, publication of individual manuscripts cannot be guaranteed.

Send proposals and submissions as Word file attachments via email to Joe Lockard (Joe.Lockard@asu.edu), Department of English, Arizona State University, and Sherry Rankins-Robertson (sjrobertson@ualr.edu), Department of Rhetoric and Writing, University of Arkansas-Little Rock. Queries are welcomed.