Newsletter

This issue covers topics ranging from pride and vulnerability, strength and survival, dealing with loss, passing time and resisting isolation. Some have written about gender journeys, experiences with family, overcoming self-harm and dealing with homophobia. Others have written about friendship, discovery and support inside.

This newsletter contains responses to the first newsletter, as well as writing on the theme of “Being Well, Being Safe”. We know that feeling safe and taking care of ourselves and each other means different things to different people. This newsletter explores some of those issues.

The Bent Bars Collective is proud to announce our first newsletter! The newsletter is written by and for prisoners and the first issue is on the topic of 'coming out' in prison. Since the Bent Bars Project began in February 2009, we have received many letters from those in prison. Among the various requests we regularly receive, many asked for information about ‘coming out’ in prison. Yet all the resources we could find on ‘coming out’ were not written with prisoners in mind. So we decided to create our own resource, by asking prisoners to share thoughts and advice on the topic. We put a call out for contributions in July – and asked people inside to tell us about their experiences of being out, or not out in prison, and what advice they would give to other prisoners thinking about coming out. The responses are printed in the first newsletter.