10/5/05 Contact: Kyes Stevens, 334/844-8946 (stevemk@auburn.edu)
David Granger, 334/844-9999 (grangdm@auburn.edu)

ALABAMA PRISON ARTS AND EDUCATION PROJECT RECEIVES GRANTS

AUBURN – The Alabama Prison Arts and Education Project (APAEP), organized just four years ago, recently received two grants totaling $13,000 that will allow it to continue its programs and include a new course on Southern literature.

The Alabama State Council on the Arts and the Alabama Humanities Foundation have granted APAEP the funds to continue its sponsorship of classes in creative writing and visual arts at four facilities and supports library development at twelve facilities in Alabama.

The Alabama State Council on the Arts awarded APAEP $10,725 in its September funding period. The grant will fund the visual arts and creative writing classes that currently take place within Julia Tutwiler Women’s Prison and Annex, the Frank Lee Youth Center (a minimum security men’s facility), Elmore Correctional Facility and the Board of Pardons and Paroles LIFE Tech transitional facility.

“These monies will enable us to proceed with our current classes, expand into a new facility and bring in additional visiting writers and artists,” says APAEP Director Kyes Stevens.

The grant from the Alabama Humanities Foundation is the first for APAEP. With on-going requests by students in APAEP classes for literature and history classes, APAEP approached AHF for a grant to support a pilot course in Southern Literature. The $2,250 grant includes a match for funding received from the Puffin Foundation and, in addition to funding the southern literature class for fall semester, will fund a presentation by Lesa Shaul, associate professor of English at the University of Alabama and member of the AHF speakers bureau, on “The Discourse of Dinner, the Subtext of Supper: Food in Southern Fiction” at the Frank Lee facility in Deatsville.

The Auburn University Center for the Arts and Humanities at Pebble Hill is the home of the Alabama Prison Arts and Education Project. For more information contact Kyes Stevens at 334-844-8946 or email stevemk@auburn.edu.

Auburn University is a preeminent land-grant and comprehensive research institution with more than 23,000 students and 6,500 faculty and staff. Ranked among the top 50 public universities nationally, Auburn is Alabama’s largest educational institution, offering more than 230 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degree programs.

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