Jennifer Marsh, Dixie State University
“Diary from Enisle Prison” is a short fiction narrative depicting privilege finally confronted with reality. In it, a reporter is temporarily imprisoned with society’s outcasts and records a few of the inmates’ tales. Internal dialogue carries this piece: by forsaking the traditional third person narration, the reader is allowed to follow the internal journey of the reporter from a view of social justice as a privileged man’s sport, to a realization of critical and urgent plight of those individuals arbitrarily deemed deviant. Modelling concepts established by the likes of Henry David Thoreau and George Orwell, this story takes political narrative to a fictional, dystopian setting to enable literary commentary on current issues. This story expresses my views on the importance of informing those voices who create policy, and was itself informed by the scholarship I have pursued as an aspiring author.