Delaware State of the Arts Podcast
Delaware State of the Arts is a weekly podcast that presents interviews with arts organizations and leaders who contribute to the cultural vibrancy of communities throughout Delaware. Delaware State of the Arts is provided as a service of the Division of the Arts, in partnership with NEWSRADIO 1450 WILM and 1410 WDOV.
Delaware State of the Arts Podcast
S12 E49: Delaware State of the Arts - Writer Cassandra Lewis
Storytelling has the power to transcend barriers, even prison walls. Meet Cassandra Lewis, an award-winning writer whose creative journey illuminates how literature can build bridges where society often constructs divides.
When Lewis began mentoring through PEN America's Prison and Justice Writing Program, she expected to guide an incarcerated writer. What emerged instead was a profound partnership with Geneva Phillips, an accomplished writer whose memoir and poetry had already garnered recognition. Their exchange of letters evolved beyond writing critique into a friendship that transformed Lewis's own creative work. Through Phillips' guidance, Lewis finally unlocked a personal manuscript she'd struggled with for years—a testament to mentorship's reciprocal nature.
The conversation explores how incarcerated writers consistently return to themes of community and connection in their work. As Lewis describes it, these narratives reveal the resilience of the human spirit in maintaining relationships despite systematic attempts to sever them. Yet practical obstacles abound: mail digitization means incarcerated people never touch original letters from loved ones; censorship creates communication uncertainty; and unexpected facility transfers can abruptly end friendships without goodbyes.
Lewis's own creative work sits at the intersection of arts and advocacy. Her fellowship-funded play examines extreme sentencing through the story of an estranged grandmother and granddaughter reconnecting across prison barriers. Rather than providing easy answers, Lewis uses storytelling to explore complex questions about criminal justice, mental health systems, and human connection. "Great storytelling inspires conversation," Lewis explains, "and that's how things get started, that's how things get moving."
For writers considering similar mentorship programs, Lewis emphasizes the importance of literary citizenship—supporting other writers and participating in the ongoing conversation of ideas. Her experience with PEN America surpassed all expectations, personally and professionally transforming both mentor and mentee.
Ready to discover how storytelling can build empathy and inspire change? Listen now to this thought-provoking conversation about writing, justice, and the power of human connection.
The Delaware Division of the Arts, a branch of the Delaware Department of State, is committed to supporting the arts and cultivating creativity to enhance the quality of life in Delaware. Together with its advisory body, the Delaware State Arts Council, the Division administers grants and programs that support arts programming, educate the public, increase awareness of the arts, and integrate the arts into all facets of Delaware life. Learn more at Arts.Delaware.Gov.
Delaware State of the Arts is a weekly podcast that presents interviews with arts organizations and leaders who contribute to the cultural vibrancy of communities throughout Delaware. Delaware State of the Arts is provided as a service of the Division of the Arts, in partnership with NEWSRADIO 1450 WILM and 1410 WDOV.
For Delaware State of the Arts, I'm Andy Trescott. Today's guest is Cassandra Lewis, an award-winning writer whose work spans creative nonfiction, fiction and playwriting. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Rumpus and more Recently she's been the recipient of the PEN America La Engle Roman Prize for mentorship and an individual artist fellowship from the Delaware Division of the Arts. Cass also mentors through PEN America's Prison and Justice Writing Program and teaches creative writing over at the Delaware Art Museum. Please welcome to the stage today Cassandra Lewis and Cassandra. As we kick off here, talk to us a little bit about what brought you into the field of not only kind of creative writing but the literature and theater world.
Speaker 2:I got started in storytelling. I think I was inspired by my dad, who was a journalist, and he always was really great at telling stories and finding stories that were interesting, and as a child I found theater to be a refuge, a great safe place to really put my emotions into it, and so theater will always be my first love. But over the years I've been very fortunate to get to kind of expand my writing into other forms and it's been really just a wonderful pleasure getting to work with other writers as they expand their writing and topics that they're interested in.
Speaker 1:The award brings up a fact that you know there's writing for writing's sake, there's writing for publishing's sake, but then there's also kind of writing for interpersonal or kind of social justice sake. Talk to us a little bit about what the PEN America Prison and Justice Writing Program is and how it is you got involved and maybe what you kind of take away most from programs such as this.
Speaker 2:Yes, thank you. So I had been a member with PEN America for many years before I applied to be a writing mentor. I had heard about this program, which is the Prison and Justice Writing Program, which pairs about 300 established writers on the outside with about 300 writers who are currently incarcerated. And it's not a pen pal program, it is a mentorship program where the writers are exchanging letters that are specific to projects that the writers are working on, and so I applied in, I think the writers are working on, and so I applied in, I think, 2022.
Speaker 2:And I didn't hear back for a while. I think they had a lot going on in their program. But then, when I did hear back from them, they paired me with this amazing writer named Geneva Phillips, and Geneva had already published an amazing memoir called Disappearing in Glimpses, and she had a great background in poetry and had won, I think, three of the Penn Prison Awards, which they offer every year to incarcerated writers. And then they publish anthologies of the awards in multiple forms poetry, nonfiction, playwriting, fiction, everything and it's really a wonderful way to read the work of incarcerated writers and also learn a little bit more about what is happening inside prisons, which you know so much of we don't really know if we are not experiencing it firsthand. So it was amazing that they partnered me with such an amazing writer.
Speaker 2:I felt very fortunate and it didn't take long for me to see that this was really more of a partnership rather than me being a mentor, because Geneva and I we exchange ideas about things, we compare notes on what we think about things we've read. It's more of just having a writing buddy that we're commiserating together. You know the specifics may be different, but we're writing about similar themes in some cases, and even when we're not, I mean, it's just nice to have that exchange. So I was really thrilled when I heard that she had nominated me and when I read her essay. It was one of the happiest moments of my life because we had become friends and I certainly didn't expect anything like that, and I had the honor of already seeing her work expand in all these ways, and so it was just such a wonderful gift to get to read that just such a wonderful gift to get to read that.
Speaker 1:You bring up a point there about themes, and I wonder, in a program such as this, are there commonalities among some of the writings that you see coming out and, if so, maybe what's one that you might want to highlight?
Speaker 2:There are commonalities, I think one of the biggest ones is the importance of community, and so one of Geneva's short nonfiction pieces which placed, which was one of the finalists for one of the awards, I think it's called the Hard Part and it's about an experience of all of a sudden being told, after living for several years in one facility, that all of a sudden, at some crazy hour, like three in the morning, you're going to have to pack up what little belongings you have and move to another facility where you don't even have time to say goodbye to the friends you've made and grown close to over those years.
Speaker 2:And it's written in such a way that is, it's just honest and vulnerable and just also kind of very matter of fact that this is a common practice. And I remember reading that and just being moved to tears and it was so beautiful the way she wrote it and it was thought provoking. And other pieces I've read by other incarcerated writers are also about different aspects of community and what it means to continue having a community even when you are completely closed off from the rest of the world. You're closed off from your family and your job and the life that you had. As you know You're forced to create new relationships, but even those relationships are sometimes broken away from you. Reading those stories and seeing the resilience and how these stories, even though the specifics of each one are very different, just seeing that importance of connection and community, which I think is something that every human being can probably relate to on some level, In her essay or her letter she goes on to say that you saw her before she fully believed in herself.
Speaker 1:And I wonder if you can maybe share some of the turning points in that relationship for you both, where maybe you did in fact kind of see her and her potential before maybe she saw it herself.
Speaker 2:That was a very generous thing that she wrote. I mean, I could tell when I first read her letters that this is someone who cares about writing, who is interested in writing, who has read a lot. I think maybe she was a little bit nervous and self-conscious because she didn't have the same kinds of privileges and opportunities that I had with my, you know, getting my education, and so I think for her that might have been something. I mean I know, because she had said this to me before that that was something that, you know, took a little bit of getting you know comfortable with, and I was nervous in the beginning too because I had heard so much and read so much about a lot of the censorship that goes on. Especially, you know, right now there's this rise of male digitalization, which means when you send a letter it's not going directly to the prison, it's going to what's called a distribution center where a company is paid to scan the original and send a digital copy to the incarcerated person. So that means if you're a parent and you want to receive a drawing that your child made, you don't get to actually touch the paper that they touched or see the drawing firsthand. You're getting a digital scan of that they touched or see the drawing firsthand. You're getting a digital scan of that.
Speaker 2:And then you know there's the whole question of books. Some books are not allowed in certain facilities and it's not always clear why, and of course we're seeing that you know outside as well. So I was nervous in the beginning that I would write something that would potentially put her in a difficult situation. So I was very careful with how I would write about, you know, things that were just. You know we're talking about literature, but you never know what someone who is reading it out of context might think. So there was always this feeling like, even though we're having these great deep layered conversations, there's always this feeling that you're being watched and read, and so it took me a long time to get used to that, because I'm not living inside the way she is. But so that was a whole process. But over time we just continued talking about the projects we were each working on and exchanging information, and the more we wrote to each other, the more comfortable I think we both became.
Speaker 1:Someone who writes in multiple genres either memoirs, fiction, plays I'm sure this kind of back and forth letter writing can help influence kind of how you write yourself in your own kind of creative toolbox, and I wonder if you could share a little bit about maybe some of the learnings or some of the improvements you've made in your own writing since beginning a process like this.
Speaker 2:So before I started working with Geneva, I was really struggling with a manuscript that I've spent, I think, the last five years working on, and it's a creative nonfiction book that I use a personal story about my mother's own struggles with mental health and how they were criminalized. I use that story as the narrative vehicle, but it's really a book that looks at the failure of certain systems, how there's no safety net for people who are in need of these services, and so part of what I was struggling with before I started working with Geneva is that I was so far removed from what I was writing about. Like, in some ways, when I had the personal narrative part, I was really in the story and those were kind of the best parts, I think, of the book. But then I kept trying to zoom out and connect it to these bigger social issues, which was the whole reason I was sharing. That kind of story was to add to the conversation, but I was having a really hard time balancing the personal narrative with these big picture philosophical questions of like how do we improve these things?
Speaker 2:Thankfully, you know, geneva was just so generous with sharing her insight, even just through her example of writing really great nonfiction herself, even just through her example of writing really great nonfiction page, and so that is an example of how this relationship really was reciprocal. You know, she really helped me with that aspect. And then I finally reached a point in the manuscript where I'm just now starting to share it with people who maybe they'll never publish it, I don't know but at least I'm at the point where I feel like it's pretty close to finished.
Speaker 1:I mean sure One of the obstacles, right when it relates to kind of this back and forth communication, is obstacles like mail delays as you bring up digitization and censorship within kind of prison communication. So as a writer, how do you kind of maintain that creativity and momentum when facing those obstacles?
Speaker 2:maintain that creativity and momentum when facing those obstacles? Yeah, it is very difficult, and when one of the anthologies that PEN America was publishing for the incarcerated writers came out I think it was the one in 2023, I wanted to help spread the word so that people would find out about these great anthologies and also help promote Geneva's work that was included in it. So I pitched a story to the Rumpus and I said, hey, I'd love to do an interview of this really great incarcerated writer. And they were very nice and said great, do it. And so we had been corresponding back and forth through the mail, through Penn's program, which is where you upload into their system and then they mail it.
Speaker 2:But what happened was, once I sent Geneva the questions, I didn't hear anything back and our deadline was looming, and so I thought, well, what's going on? I know that she really wants to do this. So I contacted Penn and I said you know, I'm not sure what's going on. I don't know if this is censorship or what. So then I sent another letter to Geneva and I said you know, if it gets to be this date and I can't remember what it was sometime in January, and you know you haven't received the questions. Here they are again.
Speaker 2:I said, if it gets to be this late, call me. And I gave her my phone number and thankfully she got that letter like the day before our deadline and I had in the meantime written a backup essay that was all about censorship, just in case we didn't get it, and I was still going to quote all of Geneva's great work in it. But it would have been a totally different piece. Thankfully we were able to do it over a series of phone calls where I just transcribed with my hand. I'm not a very fast writer. It was kind of funny, but we did it. We made the deadline and it was amazing, but it was definitely. It made me think about these mail delays.
Speaker 1:So tell us more about what that fellowship provided you in the sense of being able to kind of further your career and or maybe bring into view other opportunities you might not have been able to do before, that now you were able to kind of accomplish.
Speaker 2:Yes, thank you. Yes, the Delaware Division of the Arts does a lot of amazing things. I feel like I've been able to discover a lot of great talent here in Delaware, other artists that I'm excited to connect with, and certainly receiving that individual artist fellowship in 2021 made it possible for me to well, I created a new play during that time and it was an interesting year because it was 2021. So it was still the pandemic and a lot of theaters were closed, and so I ended up working on a project that that was not what I had originally imagined I would write, because I suddenly was challenged by the idea of, okay, how are we going to put on a play if we can't get a physical theater space and people can't show up in person? And it ended up being this amazing experience where I really had to think outside of the box, and so I reimagined.
Speaker 2:I wrote a completely different story.
Speaker 2:I actually and that story is also about prison I was going to write about painters originally, and then this became a story about extreme sentencing and solitary confinement, and it was a two-hander play.
Speaker 2:It had a woman who is a paralegal trying to get people released early release due to COVID and the other character turns out to be the long lost grandmother of the paralegal, and there's estrangement and an interesting backstory about why this grandmother character was incarcerated.
Speaker 2:What it really ends up being about is their connection and the importance of community, and how nothing is really ever what it seems on the surface, and how important it is to look at each individual story. But we were able to do this production on Zoom and, thanks to the Dramatists Guild in Philadelphia, they did an online staged reading for me, which I invited some people I look up to, and including the executive director of the ACLU of Delaware, and he liked it so much that he offered to do another performance, to sponsor another performance of it, to help highlight some of the great work that they were doing at the ACLU, and so then we ended up getting two performances out of this, and none of this would have come about if I hadn't received the Individual, and Tanya Lazar were the stars of the show and they were phenomenal.
Speaker 1:I was going to say a lot of your work sounds like it lives at the center of the arts and mentality, right? So, like arts and incarceration, arts and mental health, how do these experiences kind of inform your art, your activism and maybe like the way you see your future projects moving?
Speaker 2:Sometimes it is hard to see what it is you're working on until someone tells you what it looks like. And I think you're right. I mean, I think that's definitely a fair assessment, especially the last five or six years. Those are definitely the topics I'm looking at and really, whether I'm writing plays, fiction or nonfiction it is true I do write about. These are things that I care about, that I'm curious about, and I feel like most good writing is an exploration, and so I'm writing to try to understand these social justice issues. I'm trying to understand how we got here, how we can move forward, how we can rebuild. So it is an exploration and I feel like I'm trying different forms to kind of get at different angles of these questions. I don't have any answers, but I definitely find that being obsessed with these questions definitely is what moves me forward as a writer.
Speaker 1:What role do you feel literature, mentorship or storytelling can play in kind of transforming these systems of justice or yes, I love that question.
Speaker 2:I think that writing I've always looked at writing as a form of communication, first and foremost, and when we can experience other people's stories whether we're listening to someone else's story, reading someone else's story or writing our own story it is the first step of connecting with someone else.
Speaker 2:Literature and storytelling builds empathy and it can deepen connections between people. Once we start caring and start understanding more about people's stories, then it starts raising other questions about systemic issues and we think about social responsibility and other questions about okay, how can I as a person do more, how can I use whatever I have at my disposal to help this situation or at least not make it worse? And I think that these are fundamental, important questions that are just part of the human condition, and that's one of the reasons why I love storytelling and I care about storytelling is because it's a way that we can all move forward together, and we can. Great storytelling inspires conversation and that's how things get and that's how things get started, that's how things get moving. But it all starts with people sharing their stories and connecting with each other in that way.
Speaker 1:What do you think you would share with writers considering becoming either mentors through PEN, america or similar programs that they might have in their communities?
Speaker 2:I think that it's important to be a good literary citizen. I think part of writing and part of storytelling is, you know, it's a conversation. We're all in conversation with each other. Part of that is, you know, seeing what other writers are writing about, listening to other writers, supporting other writers in whatever way you can. I love PEN America's mentorship program and it really surpassed anything I expected. I really really feel transformed personally and professionally by the whole thing, and it's been great for Geneva, too. The same week we found out about the award. Geneva, too, the same week we found out about the award, we actually found out that she is one of the fellows for Writing Freedom Fellowship and it's through Haymarket Books and the Mellon Foundation, and so it's just one of these wonderful things where you start working on something, you start an exchange and it becomes something completely different and transcends to a different level.
Speaker 1:So we've come to the end of our time. I'd love to thank Cassandra for joining me today. If you'd like to learn more about her or read some of her work, you can visit her website at CassandraLewiscom. Thank you.
