From Dropout to Journalist…In Prison

How I found my voice as a storyteller while incarcerated and now help others become prison journalists

Prison journalist Christopher Blackwell

by Christopher William Blackwell

How did I end up a prison journalist? That is a question I’ve asked myself many times. The prison part I understand. I always knew I’d end up here—or worse. I grew up in an extremely tough environment: multiple levels of abuse, a single parent home, extreme poverty, and in a community that was over-policed, full of street gangs and plagued with drugs and violence. So prison was always in the cards if I planned to survive my environment. It’s the becoming a writer part that has always surprised me, and still does today as I often suffer from imposter syndrome. I never did well in school and struggled to write even basic papers in English classes. So I often think, how the fuck have I written for places like The New York Times?

I remember sitting in those English classes as a kid, trying to string words together in a constructive sentence and create a decent paragraph. It seemed impossible. I was often so terrified and uncomfortable in those spaces, I would do anything to escape class. I made my poor teachers my number-one target. My verbal abuse wasn’t ever because it was something they deserved; it was merely my shame and insecurities spilling out onto them. The fear of reading to the class or having to finish a paper was too much to bear. The punishment from my mom for getting suspended was far easier to deal with. Plus, I was happy to sit at home and smoke weed all day, while my mom was at work, instead of going to school.

In my early years, I was living in what I now recognize as “survival mode.” But I couldn’t know all those moments were creating the person and writer I am today—molding and sculpting me into a storyteller. Those moments were giving me the experience I needed to tell stories that would educate and resonate with so many people. Most importantly, they would give me the skills that are necessary to help humanize people from communities like mine. Something in the universe was creating a role for me, a role that would help to shift the harm I—and so many others—had been forced to experience. I was being shaped into someone only something greater than I could understand at the time. But it wouldn’t come easy. I would have to step up and put in the work.

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I entered prison no different than I was on the streets—angry and steeped in high levels of toxic masculinity (a term I wouldn’t even understand for years to come). Years went by as I refused to make anything of myself. I smoked weed, played prison politics, lifted weights, gambled on card and sports games, and sold drugs along with other scams and hustles to make ends meet while serving the 45-year sentence I was given for taking a human life.

One day, seven years into my sentence, Noel, this guy I saw around the prison, started to bug me to join the college pathway program he was a part of. I brushed him off each time he broached the subject. There was no way I was ever going back to school. I knew all too well what those days felt like. The scars of feeling like the dumbest person in class were still freshly imprinted upon my mind. They were a stain that refused to be removed from a crisp white t shirt. I wanted no part of it. But he refused to back down. Even worse, he got others I respected to start nudging me.

Against my better judgment, I gave in and decided to give school another shot. What did I have to lose? I thought. I was already in prison and, given the horrible crime I had committed, I was considered to be the worst of the worst. Not to mention, I needed a change. I needed to grow up and start acting like an adult.

My life was about to change in ways I could never have imagined.

The path wasn’t easy. I had never even learned the basic structures of writing and math growing up—I’d dropped out of school in ninth grade and had already checked out mentally around fifth grade. It took over a year to simply get those basic skills in place. But the foundation was eventually created through the kindness and devotion of many other men who had commitment to the same journey.

With each day that passed, my confidence began to grow. I realized it was never about me being dumb, it was about me evolving from living in survival mode. School—aside from math—became much easier after this revelation, and I soon had fun writing. I was creating and weaving stories about my experiences and opinions about the world and the environments that had created me. I loved getting to use my own voice. But most of all, I loved the intellectual conversations that happened in our classes. My new ability to think critically felt like freedom.

This brought me to the next stage in my life—becoming an activist, educator, and leader. I had learned how to expose the injustices I’d been forced to experience my entire life, and now I had the skills to write and talk about them. Eventually, I would learn just how mighty a pen and my voice could be. But I still had a long way to go. The foundation was being built, but the house was yet to come.

What I didn’t fully realize were the difficulties and ramifications that would come with being a prison journalist. My writing career took off at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and prison administrators weren’t happy when I began publishing and sharing their mistreatment of incarcerated people with the world. They hated the terminology I used to label them as “glorified babysitters,” or when I spoke of their lack of education or ability to act in a professional manner while doing their job. They didn’t like being held accountable, and it wasn’t something they were used to. But having the ability to get my words to the outside world drove me to another level. Before this, I simply was forced to experience whatever the carceral system threw at me. Now, I could expose the system and hopefully change it.

I quickly realized this kind of writing was my calling. I made a commitment to myself: I would expose any mistreatment, injustice, or harm against me or one of my incarcerated siblings, no matter who they were. If they couldn’t tell their story, I would. Later on in my career, I would realize I could teach others to share their stories, too. This would change everything for our movement against the carceral systems of oppression.

I was truly finding my voice. But I was quickly retaliated against. The Department of Corrections (DOC) accused me of dishonesty when publishers called to do fact checks, my mail and other forms of communication were blocked, delayed, or simply lost for weeks, and false investigations were thrust upon me and those connected to me. The DOC was wielding its power to try and suppress my voice. But I had come too far, and once you find your voice, especially living in such an oppressive environment for so long, you can no longer stand by and remain quiet. I no longer cared what the DOC had to throw in my path, my team and I would find a way around it.

The lack of technology incarcerated individuals have access to was often a serious blow to the stories I was trying to publish. Sometimes it made going back and forth with editors almost impossible. But my team and I always found a way around. If a message didn’t make it through on the prison email system, we would hop on a call and do edits line-by-line over the phone.

I challenged publishers and others who stood in my way or tried to report dishonest stories that worked to oppress or discredit incarcerated voices. I questioned publications and journalists in the free world who tried to tell our stories for us. I reminded them that we could tell our stories, and that those stories were ours to tell. And I reminded my fellow incarcerated people that we didn’t need opportunist people on the outside to share our stories. It was time for us to recapture our voices. It was important for us, as an oppressed population, to know that we aren’t voiceless, we just need a platform from which to share our voice.

After a couple years of building and shaping what my platform and voice would look like, with great support from so many incredible people, I realized the movement needed many more voices doing this work. The few of us who had figured out how to get our words out in the word would never be enough. We needed an army. We needed a mini-newsroom in every prison across the world sharing our stories and writing about the realities that led us to prison in the first place and everything in between.

The next stage was set. I would use my resources to create platforms for those around me. It became clear, if we wanted to disrupt this broken and racist system, we would need a thousand more people doing what I was doing.

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I founded The Writers Development Program, currently The Narrative Change Lab, housed at Look2Justice, with freelance journalist Emily Nonko and law professor Deborah Zalesne and the support of many volunteers. It would quickly create a massive splash. We started with six men at my prison who had never published a single story. Within a couple of years, they had combined to publish almost 200 articles in the mainstream media. And not in just small abolitionist publications that had already agreed to support our voices, but places like The Guardian, The Seattle Times, The Nation, The Hill and many others. Incarcerated voices were starting to appear in places they had traditionally been shut out of.

This work expanded over time and continues to do so each and every day. Incarcerated people as a population are now showing the world that not only do we have voices, but our voices matter and will continue to grow as we expand this work by sharing our resources and platforms with each other.

I found my calling in this life. I realized I’m more than just the environment I grew up in, that I’m not worthless because I come from a poor community that’s routinely silenced and meant to simply exist in the world doing manual labor. I’m learning how to change the system by partnering with others to educate the world about it, the harm it has caused so many, and the damage that harm is currently inflicting upon all of our communities. Because as a society, we are a web, connected to one another in some way or another.

It may be easy to assume that what I’ve managed to accomplish is a sign that prison “works.” That the conditions inside have supported me in becoming the person I am today. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. My career wasn’t nurtured through positive support by the system; it was birthed from struggle. It was born from spite and my frustration toward a system that oppressed me and millions of others like me.

Writing and sharing my story has saved my life. It has helped me see my value as a person in this world. It has shown me that I don’t have to sit by and accept the oppressive environments or the people who’ve worked to push me and those from my commUNITY into the dirt. While the people in the system pushed our seeds into the dirt, others decided to come by and water them; because of this we have grown strong and sturdy. What started with me fighting to find my voice has led to me and many others building a movement.

Finding my voice as a writer has allowed me to become the person I was always meant to be—an activist, storyteller, educator, and strong leader. It has helped me better understand the value in those around me, myself included, while working to transform the many injustices I and so many others have endured. Becoming a prison journalist helped me find a comfortable place in this society, something I never thought could have happened.

This essay is part of Work Week, a series of essays related to work and career. Stay tuned for more this week, and see our Work section for past essays.

Christopher William Blackwell, 44, is a Washington-based award-winning journalist currently incarcerated at the Washington Corrections Center. He was raised in a mixed Native American/white family in the Hilltop Area of Tacoma, Washington. He currently is serving a 45-year prison sentence for taking another human’s life during a drug robbery—something he takes full accountability for. His words can be found in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, and several other outlets. He has been incarcerated since 2003. His book, Ending Isolation: The Case Against Solitary Confinement, which he co-authored come out in September from Pluto Books and is being supported by a nation-wide Unlock The Box bus tour.