Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, Judith Clark was deeply involved in social protest movements in her teens. "Unwilling to heed the moderating influences of ageing, changing conditions, or even motherhood", she says, she was arrested in 1981 for participating in an attempted robbery of a Brinks truck, in which three people were killed. She is serving a sentence of seventy-five-years-to-life in Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. She earned her BA and MA at BHCF and helped to rebuild a college program when public funds were rescinded. She recently received her certification as a chaplain and currently works with the nursery mothers and raises service dogs for returning veterans in the Puppies Behind Bars program.
Much of Judith's work comes from her attempt to reckon with and take responsibility for her crime. Her poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Aliens at the Border, Doing Time, and Bridges. Her scholarly work includes pieces in The Prison Journal and Zero to Three. She is co-author of Breaking the Walls of Silence: Women and AIDS in a Maximum Security Prison. For a complete listing of her writings, go to: www.judithclark.org.
