We got the website working and updated. Please stay tuned for more updates as we get used to running a website and blog space. If you’ve run across this website by word-of-mouth, please tell more people about us and our work.
Also, please let your loved ones on the inside know about us, and encourage them to submit to our annual anthology. Guidelines are available for download on the main page, or you can read them, below. Thanks everyone, for your support!
Contest
Open Until October 1st, 2021
This contest is open to any incarcerated individual over the age of 18 in the United States. We focus on literacy, at IFW, but that can mean different things to different people. You can submit a poem, a short story, or an essay. We will select twenty winning poems, ten short stories, and ten essays. Feel free to submit any form of writing you have; if it doesn’t exactly fit in one of those three categories, that’s welcome. Just note in your cover letter what category you’d like to be included in. We will self-publish the winners in a bound book, which will also be available on Kindle. It will be available on Amazon for your friends, family, or library to order. Winners will receive a free copy for themselves, as well as a share of the revenue.
Revenue Details
Profits from the first year of book sales will be shared equally among all contest winners, after one full calendar year of publication, minus a donation to a victims’ fund and cost of production. If any proceeds cannot be allocated to an individual after two good-faith attempts, the revenue will be diverted to the gross revenue stream. Half of all gross revenue from this contest will go to a victims’ advocate. We’ll rotate which organization receives our funds, every year. (This first year, we’ve contacted two general organizations, and await their response to our request to associate with them.) It is an important element of Ink From Within that we bridge the gap between communities and those men and women incarcerated away from them. The overwhelming majority of people who release want to do well and be good people. By using the funds from our writing contest to contribute to victims’ relief and advocacy, we want to show the communities that we’re serious about our own reentry and our restitution.
For us at Ink From Within, it’s not enough to just stop doing bad—we have to start doing good.
Contest Rules
Please adhere to them. Failure to do so will result in disposal of your work without notification.
- No description of criminal activity. This is to keep our organization safe. We can’t keep doing our work if we become associated with people who look like they’re trying to brag about, or make a profit from, their crimes.
- No gratuitous depictions of violence, sexual activity, drug use, or gambling. We don’t censor, but our program is about literacy. If your piece does not in some way promote the helping of incarcerated women and men to be better writers and readers, then your piece is not for us. Examples include, but are not limited to, referencing the personal use of firearms or other weapons against people, or references to lewd behavior.
- No real names in your piece. Ink from Within will take every precaution to research your piece, and if it contains references to real peoples by their actual names, we will dispose of the piece. If you are writing an essay, please obtain permission from the mentioned, or change their names for the purposes of publication.
- Absolutely no hate speech—no racism, no anti-religion, no homophobia, no trans-phobia; no hate speech of any kind directed at any one. Again, this publication will reflect on all incarcerated peoples, and on what we are all trying to project. Ink From Within will protect that perception by aggressively weeding out hate-filled work.
- Clearly mark what you send us, that it is for the contest. Submit to P.O. Box 112164, Tacoma, WA 98411. Please only include the piece of writing your submitting and a brief cover letter. We do not have the staff to read personal notes or anything else not directly related to the contest. (If you are writing us for something else, please make that clear in your letter.)
Contest Guidelines
- You can submit up until October 1st. We need all submissions postmarked before that.
- You can submit it typed or handwritten. Keep in mind, though, that if we have trouble reading it, this may impact how we judge it.
- You can submit any length of work under 10,000 words (you don’t need to count them, just estimate—about 30 typed pages or fifty hand-written).
- You can do any style or genre you want: poetry doesn’t have to rhyme, stories can be any genre, the essay can be on any topic.
- You can tell us your true story—again, just be careful. In some circles they call it ‘war-stories’ when someone sounds like they’re glorifying their mistakes. We don’t want that. But we believe everyone’s story should be told. Sometimes that has a lot to do with how the story ends, or what it teaches us. If your story teaches, teach on.
When you send us your submission, please send us a short cover letter, as well. One page max. Include your name, state, DOC number, institution, and bunk assignment. Then, on every other page of your submission, please only include your State and DOC#, without your name, that way we can judge blind, with no prejudice.
We are a new organization, and still don’t have a full office staff. Please be patient with us during this contest. We will try to respond to every person who submits, but may only be able to reply to winners. Start doing good.
Ink From Within 