Newtown Quakers to Hear “Writing with Wisewomen Behind Bars"

Michele Tarter

Newtown Quaker Meeting to Hear Talk About “Writing with Wisewomen Behind Bars”

Michele Lise Tarter, Haddonfield NJ Quaker and Professor of English, The College of New Jersey, and two of her students will speak about Life Sentences: Writing with Wisewomen Behind Bars at the Newtown Quaker Meetinghouse, 219 Court Street, at 9:45 a.m. on Sunday, January 28, 2018. (http://www.newtownfriendsmeeting.org). Following the presentation, there will be worship in the manner of Friends at 11:00 a.m., with people speaking out of the silence as they are moved to do so. The public is welcome at all events.

Michele Lise Tarter will be speaking about her work in a women’s maximum-security prison, where in 2001 she developed a memoir-writing program “to help inmates reclaim their spirits, their relationships, and their lives through the power of the written word.”

Most notably, Michelle involves her college students in this work; two of them, Heather Farrell and Izabella Sandoval, will be accompanying her in this presentation. Michele will first review the rich and inspiring history of Quakers and their trailblazing work in prison reform. She will then discuss the conception and evolution of her own memoir-writing program, illuminating the liberation the incarcerated participants find in writing, healing, and reclaiming their stories and their lives. Finally, she and her students will share some successful memoir-writing exercises and experiences they have had while writing with inmates (whom they have renamed “wisewomen”) behind bars.

Michele Lise Tarter is Professor of English at The College of New Jersey. She has published and presented extensively on 17th-century Quaker women, transatlantic witch hunts, and early American prisoners. She is co-editor of two book collections: A Centre of Wonders: The Body in Early America (Cornell University Press, 2001); and Buried Lives: Incarcerated in Early America (University of Georgia Press, 2012). Her forthcoming book, New Critical Studies on Early Quaker Women, 1650-1800, will be released this April 2018 by Oxford University Press. Michele’s current book project is about the memoir-writing program she started in New Jersey’s only maximum-security prison for women in 2001. Michele is a member of Haddonfield Quaker Meeting in NJ.

Newtown Friends Meeting, co-founded by the Quaker artist and minister, Edward Hicks, in 1815, holds services every First Day (Sunday). During the school year, First Day classes for children and adults are at 9:45 a.m. and Meeting for Worship is at 11:00 a.m. Professional childcare is provided. Child Care is provided, and coffee and snacks are served in the Gathering Room after meeting for worship. All meetings are open to the public and visitors are warmly welcomed.