SARAH SHOTLAND
Abolition is Everything, Sarah Shotland, author; Jessica Peterson, designer; Antenna Press, publisher, 50 cards, 50 envelopes, 3 chapbooks, 2021.
Image Description: Photograph of Abolition is Everything printed components laid out flat on a white surface. Upper left corner has muted rainbow stripes underneath the title on a box used to contain all the printed components. Upper right shows an envelope addressed to an incarcerated person, with the name faded out for privacy. Below are red brown & dark forest green information cards and ochre yellow, and salmon pink chapbook covers with the titles “HOW TO DIG” and “EAT THE SHRIMP.”
Abolition is Everything is a participatory nonfiction publication that invites readers to learn about America's carceral system state-by-state through a deck of 50 interactive cards and 50 writing prompts. Readers can reflect on the history and future of abolitionism; correspond with incarcerated writers; and apply abolitionist values in their own lives in big and small ways. It was created during the Paper Machine residency at Antenna New Orleans in January 2021 and debuted at MoMa PS1's Printed Matter Art Book Fair. Every Sunday in 2021, White Whale Bookstore convened a group of Pittsburghers to explore the box—engaging in dialogue, writing letters, and building relationships one card at a time. Author Sarah Shotland used the project to reflect on her 13 years facilitating writing groups in jails and prisons through the Words Without Walls program, which she co-founded in 2009. Words Without Walls was sunset in 2022 and its thousands of pages of archival writing and materials are held at the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh's strip district.
Abolition is Everything -‘Prison abolitionists want to live in a world without jails and prisons, and in order to accomplish that, they work toward building conditions that would allow it to exist,’ writes Sarah Shotland. “Abolition Is Everything” is as much an art project as it is a philosophical mission. With this project, Shotland offers each of us a very real way in which our words can positively impact the lives of others while also providing a serious education in the ways and means of the American prison system.”
— Kristofer Collins, Pittsburgh Magazine
Sarah Shotland is the author of the novel Junkette and the creative nonfiction project Abolition is Everything. She is the cofounder and program director of Words Without Walls, which brings creative writing classes to jails, prisons, and treatment facilities in Western Pennsylvania.
Sarah Shotland is the author of the novel Junkette, and a playwright whose work has been performed in professional theaters around the world.
In 2009, she co-founded Words Without Walls, which brought creative writing classes to jails, prisons, and drug treatment centers in Pittsburgh until 2022. Her work has been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Heinz Endowments, The Pittsburgh Foundation, Staunton Family Farm Foundation, and Opportunity Fund.
Sarah’s most recent work, Abolition is Everything, was published by Antenna Press. Abolition is Everything is a participatory, nonfiction project that combines research, reflection, and audience action & was created during her time as the 2021 Artist-in-residence at Antenna’s Paper Machine residency in New Orleans.
Other residencies include the SFAI Equal Justice Fellowship, and the Denver Lighthouse Fort Lyon Writer-in-Residence. In 2024, Sarah was awarded a Madeline L’Engle Research Fellowship from Smith College, where she will use the special collections archives in researching her next novel.
She’s currently working on a collection of essays about teaching creative writing in jails and prisons. Her essays about the subject have appeared or are forthcoming in The Iowa Review, Creative Nonfiction, Baltimore Review, and North American Review. Sarah regularly speaks and writes about art as a tool for prison abolition. You can listen to a super-quick, 140 second talk here.
With Sheryl St. Germain, she coedited the literary anthology Words without Walls: Writers on Addiction, Violence & Incarceration, published by Trinity University Press in spring of 2015.
Her most recent play, Cereus Moonlight, was commissioned by miR Theater. After opening on the Space Coast of Florida, it played at the 25th annual Rhino Fest in Chicago. Other work for the stage has been performed in theaters in Dallas, Austin, New Orleans, and Chicago, and internationally in Spain and China. She’s also written commissioned work for Corningworks Dance and Sonarcheology Pittsburgh.
Sarah is represented by Danielle Chiotti at Upstart Crow Literary.