Diane Raptosh is a Professor and cutting-edge advocate and founder of numerous programs relating to transforming our justice system. She teaches writing within prisons and works one to one with male and female inmates struggling to recover their worth and their voice.

She is also co founder of the College of Idaho's Prison Experience Seminar and Course, which has evolved over the past 20 years and has been a leading catalyst within the state of Idaho towards education, advocacy and action. Students have the ability to opt into working within prisons to teach writing and to participate in profoundly insightful forums and discussions on-campus, that have featured leading advocates in the justice transformation movement.

IN THIS DIALOGUE (1:09) Diane shares anecdotes of the power of working creatively to recover voice, self worth, and value in a world of punishment and shame. She shares stories from how she founded the prison writing program, and the impact it has had on everyone involved, including herself equally with the inmates she has workshopped writing with, into discoveries and insights that have brought immense healing and balance.

Join Diane October 24 & 31 as she offers a 2-Part Webinar Series on creative partnerships and writing programs within prisons. She will offer insights into how to start, what the classes explore specifically, and how she works from Class one through the duration of a "semester" within a prison course.  More info coming shortly! Be sure to join the RJ on The Rise Mailing List to get updates and information!

Diane Raptosh’s fourth book of poetry, American Amnesiac (Etruscan Press), was longlisted for the 2013 National Book Award and was a finalist for the Housatonic Book Award. The recipient of three fellowships in literature from the Idaho Commission on the Arts, she served as the Boise Poet Laureate (2013) as well as the Idaho Writer-in-Residence (2013-2016). In 2018 she won the Idaho Governor’s Arts Award in Excellence. A highly active ambassador for poetry, she has given poetry workshops everywhere from riverbanks to maximum security prisons. She teaches creative writing and co-directs the program in Criminal Justice/Prison Studies at The College of Idaho. Her most recent book of poems, Human Directional, was published by Etruscan Press in 2016. Her sixth book of poems, Dear Z: The Zygote Epistles will be published by Etruscan Press in 2020.

More About Diane & Published Works

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