Escaping Into Words

Escaping Into Words: A Creative Writing Workbook is an English translation of a book originally published for incarcerated women in Brazil. Vicente Concilio and Caroline Vetori at the state university of Santa Catarina (UDESC) in Florianópolis, Brazil, were facilitating a theatre workshop at their local women’s prison when the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted their work. All volunteers were prevented from entering the prison for nearly two years. Concilio and Vetori wrote this book to stay connected to the imprisoned women, using poetic language to prompt them to write about their lives, thoughts, and ideas. Graphic designer Anelize Zimmermann created vibrant artwork to complement the text and invite readers to write and engage. The workbook was distributed for free in the prison in Florianópolis and in an open access edition online. 
 
Since 2016, the prison theatre program at UDESC has been a part of an international exchange program with the University of Michigan’s Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP). Faculty and students visit classes at each other’s universities and visit theatre workshops in prisons in both nations. Ashley Lucas’s translation of Escaping Into Words extends this exchange and makes this text available to writers in Michigan prisons through PCAP.
 
The open access version of this book makes it possible for anyone with an interest in creative writing to explore the world and their own thoughts using this innovative and beautiful text. Those with incarcerated loved ones using the book can access the online edition or purchase a paperback edition to share this experience.
 

Vicente Concilio is a theater director and associate professor in the Drama Department at the State University of Santa Catarina (UDESC), developing teaching, research and community engagement activities with a focus on theater pedagogy and its relationship with the prison system through his project Practices of Infiltration of the Theatre in Surveillance Spaces. He also researches queer theory and its relationships with teaching. He works on training projects for artists and teachers, with several published texts in the field. He published the books Theater and Prison: Dilemmas of Artistic Freedom (2008), the result of his master's research, and BadenBaden: Model of Action and Staging in Process with Brecht's Didactic Plays (2016). He translated the book Prison Theatre and the Global Crisis of Incarceration, by Ashley Lucas. In 2024, he directed the play Strip Search, by Cia. La Vaca, which discusses the shameful way family members of people serving sentences are subjected when they visit their loved ones in prison. 

Caroline Vetori is the author of We Extend Our Memories to the Sun: Paths for a Dramaturgy of Listening With Incarcerated Women and Escaping Into Words, which she co-authored with Vicente Concilio. She is one of the editors of the book History(s) of the Rain: Writing History(s) with Incarcerated Women. She is a professor in the undergraduate program in Theater at the State University of Paraná (FAP/UNESPAR).