Derek R. Trumbo, Sr., a multiple-time PEN Prison Writing Award winner, is an essayist, playwright, and author whose writing has been featured in The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting A Writer's Life in Prison (Haymarket Books, 2022), Vera Institute of Justice's The Human Toil of Jail project, and Tacenda Literary Magazine. His plays have won or placed in the top 3 at the Kentucky Theatre Association Roots of the Bluegrass New Plays Festival three years running. A Madeline L'Engle/Rahman Mentorship Award-winning essayist, Trumbo mentors, instructs, and facilitates writing circles with his fellow inmates to create tales which highlight the human struggle and adversity of this gift we call life.