Making the unimaginable possible—Institute brings creative writing workshops into county jail

Making the unimaginable possible

Institute brings creative writing workshops into county jail

January 14, 2026

The room fell silent.

A woman welled up with tears.

As she began to share her poem, her friends and fellow students rallied to her support.

Together, they worked through the pain and vulnerability of memories put to poetry.

This was the scene on a Wednesday night last fall at a creative writing workshop in the St. Joseph County Jail.

In partnership with Notre Dame’s Department of English, the Institute for Social Concerns coordinated two six-week series of workshops, one for men and one for women—the first time Notre Dame has offered such programming in the county jail.

The response was overwhelming. Forty-two students—20 men and 22 women—participated in the workshops.

In the 90-minute sessions, students read and engaged a variety of short-form writing, including songs, poems, short stories, and memoirs. After reading pieces aloud, the class provided space to reflect and discuss immediate reactions.

They then spent time on a writing exercise, either writing something inspired by one of the pieces they had read or writing about something they had been thinking about lately. Each session ended with students sharing and commenting on each other’s work.

Hayden Kirwan, postbaccalaureate research fellow at the institute, facilitated the six sessions for men, each of which was led by a different English professor. Topics ranged from medieval love poetry to speculative fiction.

“Because of the lack of technology and other programming in the jail, the students are incredibly engaged,” Kirwan reflected. “They do the reading and bring their full selves.”

The professors were impressed by the questions students asked and the various ways they engaged with the texts. “Literature, at its best, probes the human heart,” said Roy Scranton, associate professor of English, following a workshop on memoir he led for the men. “It asks huge questions about who we are and how we make our lives—how will and fate face off against each other. I think it was Faulkner who said literature is the story of the human heart at war with itself.”

Scranton described how the students are intimately familiar with the struggles present in the literature they encounter. “They are where they are because of contradictory desires and the contradictions between the individual and the system,” he explained. “To connect their lives to that kind of literary exploration is powerful. Once you give them the material to make that connection, they just blossom.”

Ann Killian, OP, assistant professor of English, led a workshop for the men on writing love songs. Since her research and teaching focuses on medieval lyric poetry, she brought in some Provencal cansos on courtly love by the twelfth-century troubadours in English translation.

“I asked the students why we listen to love songs, and what qualities make for a great one. Then they tried writing their own based on a model,” Killian recounted.

“I was impressed by the students’ willingness to share memories sparked by their favorite songs and to try creating lyrics on the spot. The students brought great energy, earnest interest, and self-deprecating humor to the discussion.”

The idea to expand the institute’s carceral engagement programming from its focus on Westville Correctional Facility to include the St. Joseph County Jail emerged from a 2024 conference the institute hosted at Notre Dame launching the Consortium for Catholic Higher Education in Prison.

Thomas Dart, the sheriff of Cook County, Illinois, delivered a keynote at the conference’s opening dinner in which he described the multitude of education and training programs at the Cook County Jail. Contrary to the common notion that jails are revolving doors, Dart described how many people are incarcerated for months and even years in jails and can benefit from educational programming just as those incarcerated in prisons, which receive most of the attention from educational institutions.

Given the increasing focus on South Bend and the surrounding region as part of Notre Dame’s Strategic Framework and the institute’s emphasis on proximity and encounter, expanding the institute’s educational reach into the county jail in the University’s hometown was a natural evolution of the institute’s carceral engagement work.

Connie Snyder Mick, professor of the practice at the institute, was eager to lead sessions with the women in the jail after teaching at the all-male Westville Correctional Facility over the past few years. “The incarceration rates for women have risen significantly in recent decades,” she shared, “and it’s important for women to have opportunities like this to process and express their stories.”

For a session just prior to Halloween, Mick had students read Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven” alongside the lyrics to Taylor Swift’s song “Evermore,” putting the two texts in conversation with one another across time and experience in ways that expanded their understanding of love, loss, and hope.

Matthew Kilbane, the Glynn Family Honors Assistant Professor of English, led a poetry workshop for women on the theme of memory. They read poems that revolve around emotionally freighted memories, including Marie Howe’s “What the Living Do” and Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays.”

According to Kilbane, the women were quick to engage with the crux of each poem, and they spent time together observing how the breathtaking force of each poem in each case relies on carefully observed imagery, the sensuous and concrete sights and sounds of life that get imprinted, with all their emotional entailments, in memory.

They then prepared to try their own hand at a poem. Kilbane introduced the group to Joe Brainard’s “I Remember,” a long poem that has given rise to a new poetic form. The form’s only rule is that each line of the poem must begin with the words “I remember.”

Volunteers read their poems aloud to enthusiastic and sympathetic acclamation from the group. Some women accessed affirmative memories, but the majority wrote their way into scenes of hardship, pain, and trauma.

“The results were marvelous—and very moving,” Kilbane shared afterward. “I was blown away by what the women wrote. And I was equally blown away by their support for one another.”

Kilbane described how some of the participants were hesitant to share and only did so after a hefty bit of supportive persuasion and encouragement from their peers. And they greeted each poet’s poem–especially the most emotionally challenging, the ones that brought tears–with deep reserves of empathetic respect.

“It was beautiful to watch the group come together over the semester,” said Kyla Walker, international justice poetry fellow at the institute, who facilitated the workshops for women, “and to witness the quick evolution from timid, careful sharing in the beginning to an open, trusting community of safety and celebration, loudly honoring each other’s work by the end.”

Wonu Fasasi, postbaccalaureate research fellow at the institute, accompanied Walker to each session, assisting with facilitation.

“It was a special thing to witness,” she said afterward. “Creative writing is a vulnerable act, and in an environment where vulnerability is often taken away from you, providing that opportunity for 90 minutes was incredibly helpful. The women voiced that appreciation every session.”

Not only did students appreciate the opportunity to engage with meaningful texts and Notre Dame faculty members. Those who completed four of the six workshops also received a certificate of completion.

“My uncle taught art at Notre Dame,” one student shared, “but I never imagined I would one day take a Notre Dame art class.”

Following the successful pilot in the fall, the institute’s carceral engagement staff are planning another set of workshops for women and for men in the jail this spring. Through these creative writing workshops, the Institute for Social Concerns is making the unimaginable possible.

All photos by Peter Ringenberg from the St. Joseph County Jail for the University of Notre Dame.