A World Apart—Women, Prison, and Life Behind Bars

Eve Ensler is the Obie Award–winning author of The Vagina Monologues, translated into over 35 languages and running in theaters all over the world. Her experience performing The Vagina Monologues inspired her to create V-Day, a global movement to stop violence against women and girls.

Ms. Ensler has devoted her life to stopping violence, envisioning a planet in which women and girls will be free to thrive, rather than merely survive. The Vagina Monologues is based on Ms. Ensler's interviews with more than 200 women. With humor and grace the piece celebrates women’s sexuality and strength. Her other work includes The Good Body, Necessary Targets, Conviction and Extraordinary Measures.

Ms. Ensler is the recipient of many awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship Award in Playwriting, the Berrilla-Kerr Award for Playwriting, the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Solo Performance, and the 2002 Amnesty International Media Spotlight Award for Leadership. She is Chair of the Women 's Committee of PEN American Center and is an Executive Producer of What I Want My Words to Do to You, a documentary about the writing group she has led since 1998 at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women . The film had its world premiere at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival where it received the "Freedom of Expression" award and premiered nationally on PBS’s “P.O.V.” in December 2003.

Vivian Nixon is a criminal justice advocate and directs the College and Community Fellowship at the City University of New York. As Executive Director, she provides direction to CCF’s activities, including intensive academic support and public leadership development for its participants and advocacy for justice reform. She is an ordained minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and currently serves as an associate minister at the Mt. Olive AME Church in Port Washington, NY. Her prior work includes operating a school-to-employment program for at-risk youth and developing a faith-based mentoring program for minority teens in her home community of Port Washington, NY. Reverend Nixon holds a B.S. degree in Non-Profit Management.

In March 2004, Reverend Nixon received the Lifting as We Climb Advocacy Award from the Correctional Association of New York. She is featured in the 2005 edition of the Rural Opportunities, Inc. calendar, which depicts the advocacy work of several formerly incarcerated people who have made successful transitions into the community. In January 2005, Reverend Nixon was awarded a Soros Justice Fellowship from the Open Society Institute and will begin her two-year fellowship project called Re-Enter Grace in August 2005.

Cristina Rathbone is the author of A World Apart: Women, Prison and Life Behind Bars, a first-hand look at prison and the women she came to know there, recently published by Random House. Born to a Cuban mother and English father, Ms. Rathbone was raised in London and moved to the city of her birth, New York, as soon as she turned eighteen. After a few years of exploration she enrolled at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and pursued a BFA degree in film. Quickly turning in her camera for the pen, Ms. Rathbone became a celebrated writer and investigative journalist, writing for numerous magazines and newspapers including the New York Daily News, Latina Magazine, Out and the Miami Herald. Her last book, On the Outside Looking In: A Year In An Inner City High School, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, won the Delta Kappa Gamma International Educators Award, and was selected as one of the best books of the year by the New York Public Library. Ms. Rathbone lives in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts with her two young children.

Deborah Small is the Executive Director of Break the Chains, an organization that seeks to build a national movement within communities of color against punitive drug policies. Break the Chains’ ultimate aim is to implement progressive drug reform policies that promote racial justice and human rights. Before assuming her position at Break the Chains, Ms. Small was Director of Public Policy for the Drug Policy Alliance where she spoke regularly to the public and elected officials, religious and community leaders as well as parents about issues relating to our government’s failed drug policy. Prior, Ms. Small was Legislative Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. It was during this period that she became an ardent advocate for drug policy reform as she became increasingly aware of the number of young black men and women incarcerated for drug offenses. She is a native New Yorker and a graduate of the City College of New York and Harvard Law School.