"I remember feeling a flush of anger that the State of Louisiana was giving Bordelon what he wanted, relief from his guilt," writes the author, who visited Angola with a film crew in 2010 as Louisiana was preparing to execute Gerald Bordelon. "My husband had died a few years before that, leaving me a widow and mother to two small children. Death, for me, was not something a governor should casually enter into with a signature — or that Bordelon could chase, to relieve his personal agony."
Voters have a chance on March 29 to turn the tide against Gov. Jeff Landry and his legislature’s extensive, expensive plans to expand the criminal-justice system in Louisiana, which already incarcerates more people per capita than any other state
“We have much work to do,” Hunter writes, “to ensure that an anti-terrorist component is part of the planning process for every special event that attracts thousands – Mardi Gras, festivals and holiday celebrations, even our Sunday second-line parades.”
"I keep paper and pen with me at all times because, like the most dynamic dreams, creativity is as wispy as Louisiana mist and dissipates quickly if not seized,” writes John Corley, associate editor of the Angolite, who says that, in his mind, he still lives in 1989, ‘the year I fell.’
This poem received second prize for poetry in the 2024 PEN Prison Writing Awards.
The author, who is also associate editor for the Angolite magazine, won an honorable mention for this essay in the 2024 PEN Prison Writing Awards.
"I am not a person who came to prison and became a writer, I am a writer who happened to come to prison."
This story was awarded the top PEN Prison Writing Award for fiction.
Local governments request more than $500 million to build regional and local juvenile-detention facilities — and to repair and construct some adult jails.
