As part of a new column for Prism, incarcerated writer Derek R. Trumbo Sr. sheds light on the many obstacles people encounter “in the darkness of incarceration”

Author Archives: Derek R. Trumbo, Sr.
Derek R. Trumbo, Sr., a multiple-time PEN Prison Writing Award winner, is an essayist, playwright, and author whose writing has been featured in "The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting A Writer's Life in Prison" (Haymarket Books, January 2022), Vera Institute of Justice's the "Human Toll of Jail" project, and Tacenda Literary Magazine. His plans have won or placed Top 3 at the Kentucky Theatre Association Roots of the Bluegrass New Plays Festival three years running. A Madeline L'Engle/Rahman Mentorship Award prize winning essayist, Derek mentors, instructs, and facilitates writing circles with his fellow inmates to create tales which highlight the human struggle and adversity of this gift we call life.