Jill McDonough, UMass Boston

Jill McDonough, UMass Boston
MFA Program in Creative Writing, English Department

jill.mcdonough@umb.edu
jill@jillmcdonough.com

I worked with Boston University’s Prison Education Program for thirteen years before I got a tenure-track job at UMass Boston and they wanted me to quit working with BU. I ran a Prison Poetry Club and annual contest/reading at MCI-Baystate with my MFA students until Baystate closed. Once I got tenure, I started year-round College Reading and Writing classes for men and women at the Suffolk County House of Correction at South Bay last year; as of 1/18/2019 we are at week 55 and have reached 102 incarcerated students. I know people at College Bound Dorchester through that work, and share weekly reports with them. Now I supervise an MFA student who continues the work, and we have an internal grant to pay an alumna to teach it over the summers.  I also volunteer at the DYS Connelly Building, offering writing classes and help to incarcerated boys. Funding: so far I have received $350 for books from the UMass Boston's Dean's Discretionary Fund, $55 for notebooks from John Roche's G.I. Journals Project, $475 in books and transcription hours from the MFA Program’s Discretionary Fund, $500 from Mini-Grants for Women, $1000 from The Awesome Foundation, $350 from the Frogmore Restaurant Charitable Fund, and 50 copies of Bullets into Bells from Beacon Press.