I'll Fly Away: Further Testimonies from the Women of York Prison

“Powerful . . . In I’ll Fly Away, the women have penned well-drawn evocative pieces about their experiences . . . . Healing is happening through writing.”—Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers

The #1 New York Times bestselling author offers an inspiring new collection of writings from the members of his acclaimed program in Connecticut’s York Correctional Facility

In 2003 Wally Lamb, published Couldn’t Keep It to Myself, a collection of essays by the students in his writing workshop at the maximum-security York Correctional Institution, Connecticut’s only prison for women. The New York Times described the book as “Gut-tearing tales . . . the unvarnished truth.”

Now Lamb returns with I’ll Fly Away, a new volume of intimate, searching pieces from the York workshop. Here, 20 women—18 inmates and two of Lamb’s cofacilitators—share the experiences that shaped them from childhood and that haunt and inspire them to this day. These portraits, vignettes, and stories depict with soul-baring honesty how and why women land in prison—and what happens once they get there. The stories are as varied as the individuals who wrote them, but each testifies to the same core truth: the universal value of knowing oneself and changing one’s life through the power of the written word.

Wally Lamb is the author of five New York Times bestselling novels: She’s Come Undone, I Know This Much Is True, The Hour I First Believed, Wishin’ and Hopin’, and We Are Water. His first two works of fiction, She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, were both #1 New York Times bestsellers and selections of Oprah’s Book Club. Lamb edited Couldn’t Keep It to Myself, I’ll Fly Away, and You Don’t Know Me, three volumes of essays from students in his writing workshop at York Correctional Institution, a women’s prison in Connecticut, where he has been a volunteer facilitator for two decades. He lives in Connecticut.