The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, Inc.

Freedom, Put in Writing

LocationChicago, Illinois, United States
Grantmaking areaPresidential Initiatives
AuthorAnthony Balas
Updated March 25, 2025
DateFebruary 13, 2024
A hand holding a pen reaches toward a piece of paper set among a design with flowers and birds on a black and dark purple background
Jedi Noordegraaf / Ikon Images

The Writing Freedom Fellowship supports the notable and necessary works of writers impacted by the criminal legal system. 

Millions of people in the US are impacted by the criminal justice system, with nearly two million people imprisoned at any time.  

Critical perspectives about our common humanity—from parenthood and mental health to memory and freedom—are often lost when they are experienced by people who are ensnared in the system. This loss is a significant one for us all, especially considering that system-impacted writers in particular can offer insights that help deepen our understanding of the impacts of mass incarceration and imagine how we might create a more just future. 

The Writing Freedom Fellowship was created to provide writers in and outside carceral settings with professional development, mentorship support, opportunities for shared learning, and an award. The Fellowship was envisioned and funded by the Mellon Foundation and the Art for Justice Fund. It was developed and is administered by Haymarket Books. After announcing an inaugural cohort in 2024, the Fellowship was expanded to support a total of 100 writers over five years. 

Fellowship recipients advance their unique creative practices across fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction forms—while together envisioning a world beyond the criminal legal system’s punishing grasp. 

Hear transformative ideas directly from fellows. 

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Ra Avis, “Fish God”

Everyone just wants to see the mistake—to fascinate on a free thing flightless.

Ra Avis (2025 Freedom Fellow) is a memoirist who in her work navigates the deeply personal intersections of grief, incarceration, and disability. She writes regularly at Rarasaur.com. Avis, based in California, is currently at work on Kites Library, a zine archive that documents experiences of incarceration and re-entry following release. 

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Michael Fischer, “Flight”

The geese ignore prison rules and suffer no consequences.

Michael Fischer (2025 Freedom Fellow) is a nonfiction writer and storyteller. In his writing he interrogates the ways in which ecological justice can play a role in dismantling the carceral state. Fischer works at the Center for Justice & Economic Advancement, a national nonprofit based in Boston. His writing appears in the New York Times, the Sun magazine, Lit Hub, Guernica, Orion, and elsewhere.

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Faylita Hicks, “Through the Night: Innocence as Trope, Legal Definition, and Dream”

At this exact moment in history, I have a choice to make about what to share or not share with this little girl.

Faylita Hicks (2025 Freedom Fellow) is the author of A Map of My Want (2024) and HoodWitch (2019). Based in Chicago, they are currently working on their debut memoir about their incarceration, A Body of Wild Light: The Fall and Rise of An American Poet (2026). Hicks is a Right of Return Fellow and the winner of the 2020 Sappho Poetry Award. 

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Crystal Wilkinson, “Asking About My Mother”

I hate that she always reminds me of all she’s done for love.

Crystal Wilkinson (2024 Freedom Fellow) is from Indian Creek, Kentucky. Her books include Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, The Birds of Opulence, and Perfect Black. She has won an O. Henry Prize for her short fiction and edits Screen Door Press, publishing diverse fiction throughout the Black diaspora. 

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Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, “Cenzontle”

You called it cutting apart, I called it a song.

Marcelo Hernandez Castillois (2024 Freedom Fellow) the author of Children of the Land: a MemoirCenzontle, and Dulce. He is a founding member of the Undocupoets, which eliminated citizenship requirements from all major poetry book prizes in the US. He teaches at St. Mary’s College and the Ashland University Low-Res MFA program. 

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Michele Scott, “Doing Whatever It Takes to Create a Prison Garden”

Within these moments of observation, I am not thinking about this place . . . I’m distracted from the truth that another year has passed in this place.

Michele Scott (2024 Freedom Fellow) is an essayist, author, and prison reform advocate. She served thirty years on a sentence of life without the possibility of parole in the world’s largest women’s prison in California—until granted a governor’s commutation. Her writing has been published in Elle and the Marshall Project among others. 

Grant insight

The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, Inc.

Haymarket Books (also known as The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, Inc.) was awarded $1,505,000 in September 2022 and $5,729,000 in December 2024 through Mellon’s Presidential Initiatives.

View grant details

Related

March 25, 2025
Haymarket Books and Mellon Foundation Announce Second Cohort of ‘Writing Freedom’ Fellows