In conversation with Caroline Leavitt, at St. Peter’s Parish Hall, 10:00 am to 10:50 am
About the author
Jean Trounstine is an author, activist, and professor emerita at Middlesex Community College in Lowell, Massachusetts whose 7th book and first fiction is Motherlove. Her most recent work of non-fiction is Boy With A Knife: A Story of Murder, Remorse, and A Prisoner’s Fight for Justice. It explores the true story of Karter Kane Reed and the injustice of sentencing juveniles to adult prisons.
Trounstine worked at Framingham Women’s Prison for ten years where she directed eight plays with prisoners. Her highly-praised book about that work, Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women’s Prison has been featured on NPR, The Connection, Here and Now, and in numerous print publications here and abroad. In addition, she has spoken around the world on women in prison, co-founded the women’s branch of Changing Lives Through Literature, an award-winning alternative sentencing program featured in the New York Times and on The Today Show, and co-authored two books about the program.
In 2018, she was invited to Italy and awarded the Gramsci International Award for Theatre in Prison for her work in literature and theatre for the past 30 years.
MFOB featured book: Motherlove
Motherlove is a powerful short story collection about an often-forgotten group: the mothers of children who kill. With deft writing and deep empathy, Trounstine explores the stories of ten mothers, each struggling with the aftermath of murder. While fictional, Trounstine’s characters are drawn from her more than thirty years of experience with prisoners and their families, making her stories all the more real and resonant.
