A Grip of Time: When Prison Is Your Life

by Lauren Kessler

Overview

A Grip of Time (prison slang for a very long sentence behind bars) takes readers into a world most know little about—a maximum-security prison—and into the minds and hearts of the men who live there. These men, who are serving out life sentences for aggravated murder, join a fledgling Lifers' Writing Group started by award-winning author Lauren Kessler. Over the course of three years, meeting twice a month, the men reveal more and more about themselves, their pasts, and the alternating drama and tedium of their incarcerated lives. As they struggle with the weight of their guilt and wonder if they should hope for a future outside prison walls, Kessler struggles with the fiercely competing ideas of rehabilitation and punishment, forgiveness and blame that are at the heart of the American penal system. Gripping, intense, and heartfelt, A Grip of Time: When Prison Is Your Life shows what a lifetime with no hope of release looks like up-close.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781684350780
Publisher:	Red Lightning Books
Publication date:	04/25/2019
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Lauren Kessler is an award-winning author and (semi-) fearless immersion reporter who combines lively narrative with deep research. She has explored everything from the gritty world of a maximum-security prison to the grueling world of professional ballet. She is the author of ten works of narrative nonfiction, including Raising the Barre; Clever Girl; and The Happy Bottom Riding Club. Her books have been BookSense selections, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times bestsellers, Wall Street Journal and People magazine "best" selections, Pacific Northwest Book Award winners, and Oregon Book Award winners.
Her journalism has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Los Angeles Times Magazine, O Magazine, salon.com, Utne Reader, the Nation, newsweek.com, Prevention, Ladies Home Journal, and elsewhere. Kessler is an international speaker and workshop leader.
She founded a writers' group for inmates of a maximum-security prison, teaches storytelling for social change to nonprofits in the U.S. and abroad, and works with traditional journalists who want to hone their storytelling skills. She blogs at www.laurenchronicles.com about living an engaged life. She lives in Oregon.

What People are Saying About This

Alex Kotlowitz

A Grip of Time is a beautiful, tender-hearted story of a group of prisoners for whom writing became their lifeline. Lauren Kessler avoids all the usual tropes in writing about prison, and has written a keenly observed and deeply felt narrative about what it means to be locked up for life. This book, so original and so compelling, took hold of me, and wouldn't let me go. It was revelatory.

Ted Conover

I have long admired Lauren Kessler. Her latest book, A Grip of Time , evinces unflinching sympathy for the incarcerated who would lift and transform themselves through writing their stories.

Rene Denfeld

What happens when hope is gone? A Grip of Time is the true-life story of a group of men sentenced to life in prison. They have gathered in a writing group, telling stories no one will ever hear. With a clear eye, Lauren Kessler writes of their journey—and her own. This is a devastating examination of guilt and remorse, of the unanswered questions of a nation that has pursued mass incarceration without even asking what justice means, or should be. Erased, vanished, haunted: this is a story not just about American prisoners, but of our country's moral code.

Edward Humes

With A Grip of Time, Lauren Kessler takes us on a compelling, intensely personal journey into the rarely glimpsed end point of our justice system. Through the lives and poignant stories of lifers, Kessler reveals the insidious truth behind America's world-record mass incarceration: The system is not, as many believe, failing at its job. It's doing exactly what it was designed to do—dehumanize inmates and leave them ill-equipped to rejoin society. What dignity, meaning, and success these lifers achieve come despite the system's design.

Editorial Reviews

02/18/2019

Kessler, a journalist and University of Oregon professor, chronicles her experience leading a writing group at Oregon State Penitentiary in this poignant work of narrative nonfiction. The book provides insight into life inside a maximum-security prison while illuminating the benefits of the craft of writing. Kessler’s writing, as well as the writing of the men in her group, provides readers with rich descriptions of the lush entrance to the prison, the rigid system of rules that could be disrupted by random acts at any moment, and the inmates’ sterile cells. She also describes in detail the hurdles she faced in starting the writing group and keeping it running, negotiating the bureaucracy around training, bringing books for the men, ensuring they can attend meetings, and so on. She also describes her pedagogical methods, including those she uses to help her writing group open up without feeling too vulnerable, starting each session with open-ended, single-word prompts like “dreams.” Readers get to know the group members through their work and Kessler’s discussions about them; one participant writes movingly about the idea of owning one’s time, another about how hope is the thing that keeps a person at the end of their metaphorical rope from dropping it. This compassionate account reveals a bit of what life is like inside prison, and a bit about how writing can forge connections among vastly different people. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"The book provides insight into life inside a maximum-security prison while illuminating the benefits of the craft of writing. . . .This compassionate account reveals a bit of what life is like inside prison, and a bit about how writing can forge connections among vastly different people."—Publishers Weekly

"Kessler gives a pulsing heart and a human face to this portion of the population all too often forgotten outside the walls. An incisive, welcome look at prison life in the U.S."—Kirkus Reviews

"With A Grip of Time, Lauren Kessler takes us on a compelling, intensely personal journey into the rarely glimpsed end point of our justice system. Through the lives and poignant stories of lifers, Kessler reveals the insidious truth behind America's world-record mass incarceration: The system is not, as many believe, failing at its job. It's doing exactly what it was designed to do—dehumanize inmates and leave them ill-equipped to rejoin society. What dignity, meaning, and success these lifers achieve come despite the system's design."—Edward Humes, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of Burned: A Story of Murder and the Crime That Wasn't

"What happens when hope is gone? A Grip of Time is the true-life story of a group of men sentenced to life in prison. They have gathered in a writing group, telling stories no one will ever hear. With a clear eye, Lauren Kessler writes of their journey—and her own. This is a devastating examination of guilt and remorse, of the unanswered questions of a nation that has pursued mass incarceration without even asking what justice means, or should be. Erased, vanished, haunted: this is a story not just about American prisoners, but of our country's moral code."—Rene Denfeld, internationally bestselling author of The Child Finder

"A Grip of Time is a beautiful, tender-hearted story of a group of prisoners for whom writing became their lifeline. Lauren Kessler avoids all the usual tropes in writing about prison, and has written a keenly observed and deeply felt narrative about what it means to be locked up for life. This book, so original and so compelling, took hold of me, and wouldn't let me go. It was revelatory."—Alex Kotlowitz, bestselling author of There Are No Children Here

"I have long admired Lauren Kessler. Her latest book, A Grip of Time, evinces unflinching sympathy for the incarcerated who would lift and transform themselves through writing their stories."—Ted Conover, author of Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing

From the Publisher

2019-03-10
An intrepid journalist immerses herself in a maximum security prison.

Displaying her impeccable observational skills, Kessler (Raising the Barre: Big Dreams, False Starts, and My Midlife Quest to Dance The Nutcracker, 2015, etc.) takes on the complex, fraught subject of incarceration in America. For most Americans, she writes, the portrayals of prisons in dramas like The Shawshank Redemption and Orange Is the New Black are the only sources of information about that world. "We figured we knew what was what. But of course we didn't," she explains, stating that her mission was to "learn about this hidden world. So that we all could. I could teach these men to craft stories. They could educate me about prison life. I needed to know—I thought we all needed to know—who these people were that we put away, far away from us, in a country that puts more people in prison than any other country on earth." After arduously pursuing permission to launch a writers group at Oregon State Penitentiary, she finally succeeded and spent the next three years visiting inmates willing to participate in the Lifers' Writing Group. Her group included a dozen convicted murderers of varying ages serving life sentences, some with, others without, parole. Some participated regularly, others came and went, but the core became committed to expressing themselves through the written word. Discussing everything from "joy" to "privacy" to topics like recidivism, Kessler moved deeper into these men's collective life experiences as they revealed themselves both verbally and on the page. Their inner thoughts and feelings are as eye-opening as they are enlightening. "I am, time and again, struck by their intelligence, their insight, their candor, their humor," writes the author. Between poignant moments tossed up with the drudgeries, frustrations, and clever dodges of prison life, Kessler gives a pulsing heart and a human face to this portion of the population all too often forgotten outside the walls.

An incisive, welcome look at prison life in the U.S.

Kirkus Reviews