Between Constructs and Freedom

An interview by Midori Yamanaka

A zine that Midori made to publish and distribute the interview she did with me. I enjoyed the conversation with her, which we conducted on a Google doc over a series of weeks. Responding to her questions in someways led me to want to start this Substack, so that I could continue writing down my thoughts on various subjects and making them public. Midori agreed that I could post the interview.

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Between Constructs and Freedom

Midori Yamanaka: Hi Harrell, it’s been a while. How have you been? What have you been up to?

Harrell Fletcher: I’ve been working on the Some People Press (SPP) autobiographical writing and publishing workshop at Columbia River Correctional Institution,
a minimum-security prison here in NE Portland. We have published four books by four different authors and are working on more. I go into the prison to lead the workshops every Friday afternoon with Laura Glazer who I collaborate with on the project.

I’ve also been volunteering at a farm animal sanctuary outside of Portland. I go there every week with a very old friend of mine from college, James Harrison. We hang
out and feed the animals (over three hundred of them, including my favorite, the pigs), fill water troughs, clean up the barns, pick up a lot of poop, and various other things like that. I’ve been a vegetarian since I was sixteen and have always liked being around animals, but this is the first time that I’ve spent time on a farm animal sanctuary, which has been a desire of mine for a long time.

In addition to that I do a little writing of my own, read a lot, garden, cook, go on long walks, and spend time at the coast with my partner Sarah.

Midori: You’ve been working with the prison for quite a while now. How long have you been running this project?

Harrell: I started volunteering at the prison eight years ago, initially working on an art related project, then a comedy one. I wasn’t able to go in for two years during Covid and then about three years ago Laura and I started the writing workshop at CRCI.

Midori: It’s amazing that people can publish books while in prison. How do you collaborate with them?