J.D. Mathes

J.D. Mathes is a PEN America Writing for Justice Fellow. He has worked as a screenwriter with Rehabilitation Through the Arts, and was awarded the Norman Levan Grant four times. He contributed a chapter to The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting A Writer’s Life in Prison for PEN America. He teaches writing workshops for formerly incarcerated men and women and their families as well as lectures on free speech and prisoner’s rights with PEN America. Mathes the author of Ahead of the Flaming Front: A Life on Fire, winner of the North American Book Prize; an essay collection Fever and Guts: A Symphony; The Journal West: Poems; and Of Time and Punishment: A Memoir. He has published essays in journals such as The Sun, The Southern Review, War, Literature & the Arts, The Fourth Genre, and The Baltimore Review. Among things he’s done to support his writing, and two daughters have been a wildland firefighter on a helicopter-rappel crew and logistics at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Antarctica where he led the Southernmost Writers Workshop in the World. He lives near Los Angeles, California.