Lawson Strickland

Dec 26, 2024 | thelensnola.org | Lawson Strickland

The old man hated mornings the most. Hated walking, the itchy wool blanket, the sounds of others; hated climbing down from atop the double rack, the pain of his bare feet on the metal rungs; hated sitting on his locker box to put his socks and boots on. He hated with dispassion, not with the fiery indignation of youth. Not like when he was young and his hate was fuel. Now, he was old, and his hate was a rut. A timeworn groove through his soul that was quiet and easy and worn smooth.

Dec 26, 2024 | thelensnola.org | Nick Chrastil |Lawson Strickland

Strickland’s short story, “Waiting,” won the PEN Prison Writing Award for Fiction, and will be published in the forthcoming 2024 edition of the PEN Prison Writing Awards Anthology. It’s also published here by The Lens. What is your writing process like? When and where do you get your writing done? This has varied over time. For 23 years, I was confined to solitary, which afforded me all of the time I ever needed to write.