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SpeakOut! Writing Workshops
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SpeakOut! Writing Workshops:
SpeakOut! Writing Workshops take place at the Larimer County Detention Center and Turning Point. In 1.5 hour weekly workshop sessions, we seek to present a range of approaches and techniques for engaging writing. Each session involves a blend of lecture and discussion to examine literary texts, historical artifacts, and contemporary writing techniques and tools. In addition, each session gives participants opportunities to apply the concepts discussed to their own lives through guided writing exercises. Writers respond to prompts on issues central to their lives, including confinement, freedom, family, pain, anger, beauty, love, life, place, and home. Participants are then invited to read their work aloud and give/receive feedback.
The writing that results from the workshop is compiled in a bi-annual journal, which is circulated at no charge. The SpeakOut! Journal gives voice to issues prisoners and at-risk youth face, works to counter negative stereotypes regarding incarcerated people and individuals in treatment programs, and creates a society less hostile to prisoner re-entry.
The journal is celebrated each semester at a coffee-house style celebratory reading hosted on-site by the participants. Outside guests are invited to attend. These are held at the end of each semester.
The purposes of this alternative literacy workshop are:
- to provide a safe and encouraging space for women and girls to experiment with language and communication as a tool for understanding their lives and their relationship to the larger world
- to complement skills-based literacy programming through a literary and humanities-based writing instruction that moves beyond traditional methods of evaluation
- to create opportunities for women to recognize the value of their own experience
- to help participants evaluate past actions and envision life change
- to give incarcerated and at-risk women and girls a public voice and a sense of their important and value in society through the circulation of the bi-annual SpeakOut! Journal
- to increase public awareness on issues of incarceration and social justice
SpeakOut! Publications to Date
- Do Not Be Afraid, Speak Out (Summer 2005 at Turning Point): 14 authors, 29 titles, 24 pages
- Feelings Unlimited (Summer 2005 at the Community Corrections Halfway House): 6 authors, 38 titles, 24 pages
- Speak Out! Women's Writing Workshops (Fall 2005 at Turning Point): 12 authors, 45 titles, 32 pages
- Releasing Locked up Emotions (Fall 2005 at the Larimer County Detention Center): 16 authors; 49 titles; 40 pages
- Imprisoned Voices (Spring 2006 at the Larimer County Detention Center): 35 authors; 103 titles; 64 pages
- On Wings of Words (Fall 2006 at the Larimer County Detention Center): 19 authors; 59 titles; 40 pages
- Inside (Spring 2007 at the Larimer County Detention Center): 18 authors; 51 titles; 32 pages
- Reflections of the Unlocked Soul (Fall 2007 at the Larimer County Detention Center): .19 authors, 50 titles, 32 pages, full-color cover.
- A Breath of Truth: Bringing Out the Voices of Teenage Writers (Fall 2007 at Turning Point): 11 authors; 27 titles; 20 pages.