Arts Mentoring for Released Prisoners: In Profile – A Mentoring Relationship
Mentee: Shaun Attwood
After graduating from Liverpool University with a business degree, Shaun Attwood emigrated to Phoenix, USA to work in finance, quickly becoming a successful stockbroker, and then a millionaire day-trader during the dot-com bubble.
A fan of the rave culture in Manchester, Shaun took his love of dance music with him when he moved to the US. While working hard by day, Shaun also played hard at night, submerging himself in Phoenix’s rave underworld. By the late 1990’s, he was the head of an organisation involved in throwing raves and distributing club drugs, including Ecstasy. A SWAT team arrested him in May 2002. He spent over 2 years on remand in Maricopa County jail, where in 2004 he began the blog ‘Jon’s Jail Journal’ documenting the conditions inside.
After two years on remand, Shaun pleaded guilty to money laundering and drugs offences, and was sentenced to 9½ years. Whilst in prison Prisoners Abroad entered one of his short stories “Amazing Grace” into the Koestler Awards and it won the Hamish Hamilton prize for short stories. After serving almost 6 years, Shaun was released from prison in December 2007.
Banned from the USA for life, Shaun continues to highlight the experiences of his prisoner friends still inside Arizona’s prisons as well as other prisoners across the world via his blog, which went on to attract international media attention after excerpts were published in The Guardian.
Now rebuilding his life in the UK, Shaun has chosen to share his story with young people to give them an insight into the harsh realities of being a prisoner abroad. Shaun is also currently writing a book about his time in jail in the hope that it will provide a real eye-opener to the potential pitfalls of getting involved with drugs and crime while in another country.
Mentor: Sally Hinchcliffe
Born in London in 1969, Sally grew up all over the world as her father served the Foreign Office in New York, Kuwait, Tanzania, Dubai, Zambia and Jordan.
Sally was educated at Dollar Academy, Scotland and Cranleigh School, Surrey. She read PPE at Oriel College, Oxford and then took an MSc in Information Technology at the University of the West of England (Bristol) - or Bristol Poly as it was then more prosaically known. In 2004 Sally did an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, taught by Julia Bell and Russell Celyn Jones. As part of the course, she set up and edited the inaugural edition of the Mechanics’ Institute Review, aka MIR.
Since 1994 Sally has worked for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in the IT department, developing databases to support its scientific work. In 2001 she took a two year sabbatical from Kew to work in Swaziland as a volunteer with Skillshare International. Sally began writing seriously in 2003 and has had a number of short stories published. She also write occasional reviews for The Small Press Review. Sally’s first novel, Out of a Clear Sky, was published by Pan Macmillan in May 2007, and was selected as the May Book of the Month by Radio Five Live’s Book Panel.
Shaun Attwood Writes...
When I was in prison in America, Prisoners Abroad entered my short story “Amazing Grace” into the Koestler Awards. Then last summer when I was back in England, I received a phone call from their office in London congratulating me on winning a Koestler Award – the Hamish Hamilton prize for short stories. The award did much more than make my day, but I’ll get to that after I explain my situation. I was a stockbroker gone wild in Arizona, arrested by SWAT as part of a series of dawn raids, and sentenced to 9 ½ years for money laundering and drug offences.
Incarcerated in America, I started Jon’s Jail Journal, a blog that exposed humanrights violations at Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Madison Street jail and attracted international media attention after excerpts were published in The Guardian. I emerged from prison hoping to make a career out of the writing skills I’d developed, but I didn’t have any resources or effective connections. For months, I struggled to find professional help and guidance, all to no avail. Then I won the Koestler prize, and things changed overnight. I got to read my story to an audience at the Royal Festival Hall, where I also told the people at Koestler about my need for outside help. They immediately had me apply for their mentor program.
Meeting my Koestler mentor, Sally Hinchcliffe, for the first time, I knew she was the kind of no-nonsense person I like to work with. I’ve now had three mentor sessions, and thanks to her constructive feedback, the standard of my prose is coming along. She’s helping me improve my book about my time in the jail, and showing me how to approach literary agents. Thanks to the Koestler mentor program, I expect to be a published author in the next year or so.
For ex-prisoners looking to make a career in the arts, finding help, guidance and resources is almost impossible. Koestler is one of the rare organisations helping ex-prisoners pursue their career ambitions in the arts and to become productive members of society. I deeply appreciate Prisoners Abroad introducing me to Koestler, and Koestler for helping me pursue a career as a writer.
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