Caits Meissner

Caits Meissner is a writer, editor, and multidisciplinary artist. From 2018 to 2023, she served as the Director of Prison and Justice Writing Programs at PEN America, where she spearheaded national literary justice initiatives and edited the acclaimed anthology The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting a Writer’s Life in Prison (Haymarket Books, 2022)—distributing 75,000 physical copies free of charge to incarcerated readers nationwide, and later going on a national book tour with Freedom Reads. She is also the author of the forthcoming Bleeding in Public (Haymarket Books), a book-length essay drawing on firsthand accounts, political analysis, and mythology to explore how menstruation is governed in carceral settings. An experienced arts educator who has taught writing in carceral and university settings—including John Jay College of Criminal Justice and The New School—her creative production also includes an original choreopoem by Mahogany L. Browne commissioned by Lincoln Center in collaboration with Essie Justice Group, centering the voices of system-involved Black women. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the City College of New York and is based in New York City.