Kenneth E. Hartman, Collaborating Teaching Artist: Writing, is a writer and prison reform activist. Convicted of murder at the age of 19, he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. After serving more than 37 years, on April 15, 2017, California Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr., commuted his sentence to life with parole. He was released on December 20, 2017, and remains free, working as a prison programs consultant for a Los Angeles-area nonprofit involved in prison rehabilitation and reentry, and as a contract grant proposal writer.
Ken wrote about his experiences in prison and the Honor Program in his essay “A Prisoner’s Purpose,” which won one of the John Templeton Foundation’s 2004 Power of Purpose Awards. In a 2009 New York Times editorial, he described the effects of the recession on the prison system. His 2009 memoir, Mother California: A Story of Redemption Behind Bars, won the 2010 Eric Hoffer Award for a memoir. In a December 2014 feature for Harper’s magazine, he described three decades of prison Christmases. Also, in 2014, he edited and contributed to Too Cruel, Not Unusual Enough, an anthology of writings by prisoners serving life without the possibility of parole that won Best Anthology for 2015 from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. Since being released from prison, Ken has published a memoir of his family called “They Dance Cheek-to-Cheek” and a reported essay called “Life After Life: Why Parole in America is Just Another Prison” in Harper’s magazine’s December 2018 edition and October 2019 edition, respectively. He is an organizer, a public speaker, a certified Life Coach, and a passionate advocate for transformational change to the prison system.
