Chandra Bozelko
Ex-Prison Inmate, Columnist and Poet to Speak to Retired Men’s Group in Greenwich
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The Retired Men’s Association of Greenwich (RMA) presents Chandra Bozelko, whose talk is entitled: “From Princeton to Prison: Lessons in Mass Incarceration.”
The talk is on Wednesday, Nov. 7 at 11 a.m. at First Presbyterian Church, 1 West Putnam Ave., in downtown Greenwich. As a graduate of Princeton University who was in the middle of post graduate study when she was arrested, Chandra Bozelko was an unlikely inmate. She served more than six years at the York Correctional Institution, Connecticut’s only women’s prison, for several non-violent crimes that remain on appeal. While she was in prison, she published a book of poetry, Up the River: An Anthology. Chandra was the first incarcerated person to write a column from behind bars, called “Prison Diaries.” The column is now a blog which updates weekly with a new “diary” entry. “Prison Diaries” won the 2018 People’s Voice Webby Award and won first place in the National Society of Newspaper Columnists annual contest in 2016. In January 2017, Ms. Bozelko was granted a John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim Criminal Justice Reporting Fellowship to report on indigent defense under the new presidential administration.