PEN America Taking Applications for Prison Writing Mentors

PEN America’s Prison & Justice Writing Program is now accepting volunteer applications for the 2025–2026 Prison Writing Mentorship Program.

The PEN Prison Writing Mentorship Program has been a pillar of the Prison and Justice Writing Program for nearly 50 years. Separated from the outside world, incarcerated writers face unique challenges to their emergence and careers as writers, journalists, and artists with valuable contributions. The PEN Prison Writing Mentorship Program aims to fill this gap by matching an incarcerated writer with a writer on the outside who has volunteered to read and respond to submitted work—a relationship similar to that of a writer and editor.

For more than five decades, PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing program has amplified the work of thousands of writers who are creating while incarcerated in the United States. By providing resources, mentorship, and audiences outside the walls, we help these writers to join and enrich the broader literary community. Committed to the freedom to write in U.S. prisons as a critical free expression issue of our time, we leverage the transformative possibilities of writing to raise public consciousness about the societal implications of mass incarceration and support the development of justice-involved literary talent.

Goals for the PEN Prison Writing Mentorship Program:

• Celebrate Different Perspectives
• Develop a Writing Practice
• Strengthen Literary Craft
• Explore New Methods of Storytelling
• Foster Connections with Literary Landscape

Below are key dates for the 2025-2026 mentorship cycle. Some of these dates, such as the orientation, are subject to change based on internal and participant scheduling.

• June 1 – July 31, 2025: Mentorship application open
• September 30, 2025: All mentor/mentee pairs confirmed
• October 7, 2025: Mentor Orientation (virtual)
• October 15, 2025: Correspondence cycle begins
• August 14, 2026: Correspondence cycle ends

Apply for the PEN Prison Writing Mentorship Program here --->>> application

Learn more about the program --->>> PEN Prison Writing Mentorship Program

PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide by championing the freedom to write and recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. The organization's mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.