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ZOOM Live Virtual Human Rights Book Club - Grip of Time

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Join us for a LIVE book discussion with local author and professor Diane Raptosh via Zoom!

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.

A graduate of the University of Michigan MFA Program, Diane Raptosh serves as the Idaho Writer-in- Residence (2013-2016) and the Boise Poet Laureate (2013). Her most recent book of poems, American Amnesiac  (Etruscan Press), was Longlisted for the 2013 National Book Award. The recipient of three fellowships in literature from the Idaho Commission on the Arts, she holds the Eyck-Berringer Endowed Chair in English at The College of Idaho, where she teaches literature and creative writing as well as directs the program in criminal justice/prison studies.

This is a virtual event that will take place via Zoom.  In order to participate, you will need to "purchase" a FREE ticket via Event Brite to obtain the Zoom Access Code.  Tickets are availabe 5/4 - 5/14, 6:30 p.m. MST.

This event is FREE and open to the public.  Books are available at Rediscovered Books.