Latest / The WritersWeekly Podcast / Episode 59: Authors Who Wrote Bestselling Books WHILE IN PRISON!

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Episode 59: Authors Who Wrote Bestselling Books WHILE IN PRISON! · The WritersWeekly Podcast

0:01
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Writers Weekly Podcast, a forum geared toward the writing enthusiasts and those who want to make money from their writing.
0:08
SPEAKER_00: I'm Brian Wynn, the managing editor of Writers Weekly, and I'll be your host along with Angela Hoy, the creator of Writers Weekly, and president and CEO of BookLocker.com, a full service book publishing company.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: What do you want to find about a professional writer?
0:25
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0:31
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0:36
SPEAKER_00: You can also click over to writersweekly.com.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: There you will find not only thousands of articles about professional writing, but you can also find current paying markets and job listings to help you boost your writing career and even your bottom line.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: But for now, let's get on to this episode of the Writers Weekly Podcast.com.
1:14
SPEAKER_00: And with me, as usual, is Angela Hoy, owner of writersweekly.com and uh president CEO of BookLocker.com, a full service book publishing company.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: Wow, we've got some really cool stuff today.
1:29
SPEAKER_01: We do.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: And but first, you still have time to get your book on the market by Christmas if you join up with booklocker.com right now.
1:40
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1:40
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1:41
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1:41
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1:43
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1:46
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1:46
SPEAKER_00: When you uh check out, use the podcast 200 code to get$200 off of our top three book publishing packages.
1:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, go for it.
2:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, don't wait.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: If if you're if you're just now starting to, you know, look for look for a book publisher, don't go jumping online and go with the cheapest.
2:10
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2:15
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2:23
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2:24
SPEAKER_00: You go with one of these companies online, chances are your Christmas surprise is gonna be ho ho ho.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: I emptied out your bank account.
2:30
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2:31
SPEAKER_00: So uh come on over to booklocker.com, family owned and operated, we've been in business 27 years, got a great uh better business bureau rating and five-star ratings all over the internet.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: So come on, join up.
2:43
SPEAKER_02: And if you are looking at other companies, uh go to writersweekly.com, click on the contact us button.
2:48
SPEAKER_02: I will send you the link to our articles, 11 ways to tell if a publishing services company is a scammer, and you probably need only to look at number one to determine if they're a scam or not.
2:59
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
2:59
unknown: Yeah.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: Home office, anything?
3:02
SPEAKER_00: Our dog tanks running around with a cone on his head and a sock on his foot.
3:06
SPEAKER_02: He's had it hit the cone of shame on for like a month now.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: He's got his big nasty thing on his foot, he won't quit licking and biting on.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: So we've got to not only cut because we put the cone on his head, he figured out how to contort his body and stick his foot into the cone so he could so he could lick that sore spot.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: So we now have to put a sock on his foot and wrap it with vet tape so he can't get to that.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
3:31
SPEAKER_02: He's not a happy boy.
3:32
SPEAKER_02: And how much have we spent on vet bills in the past month?
3:34
SPEAKER_02: 1500 bucks.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: A little over a thousand.
3:37
SPEAKER_00: Um and he's worth it.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: And he's he's walking, he does this deliberate.
3:42
SPEAKER_00: He we put that cone on his head, he walks around bumping into us and bumping into furniture and hitting us in the back of the legs with it.
3:50
SPEAKER_02: Trying to look pathetic.
3:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
3:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he does it deliberate.
3:53
SPEAKER_00: I know it, just to annoy us.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: He's like, You stuck this thing on my head, I'm gonna get you back.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: Right.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: And and so it's like everywhere we go in the house.
4:01
SPEAKER_00: Normally, I wander around the house, I'm you know, we're we're cleaning up, we're doing stuff, and he'll just lay around and not do anything.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: But no, he's got to follow us all over the house, and he gets right behind you and he keeps bumping you in the back of the knees, back of the knee, which makes your leg bend and you could possibly fall down.
4:19
SPEAKER_02: So, yeah.
4:19
SPEAKER_00: 100-pound dog bumping you in the back of the knees with a cone on his head.
4:23
SPEAKER_00: Right.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: Fun.
4:24
SPEAKER_02: He's not the smartest puppy in the bass.
4:27
SPEAKER_00: He's not.
4:27
SPEAKER_00: You got anything else?
4:29
SPEAKER_02: Well, the grandkids were here.
4:30
SPEAKER_02: Grandkids were here the other day.
4:31
SPEAKER_02: We had a great time with them.
4:32
SPEAKER_02: That was fun.
4:32
SPEAKER_02: That was awesome.
4:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they love going out and getting eggs, and they really enjoyed watching our rooster attack, Brian.
4:38
SPEAKER_02: That was hilarious.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: That was that was yeah, we got a rooster that um now, he's a good rooster, don't get me wrong.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: He's not attacking people when they bend over and and stuff like that.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: Right.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: But um, I got a big pair of um rubber boots that I wear to go out with the chicken coop, so I'm not tracking in, you know, a bunch of bird poop into the house and stuff.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: And uh he don't like those boots.
4:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: And so if I walk up to him with those boots on, he will attack the boot.
5:03
SPEAKER_00: He will not he doesn't attack me, he will attack the boots.
5:06
SPEAKER_02: We will put a link to that funny video under this episode at writersweekly.com slash podcast episode 59.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
5:14
SPEAKER_00: Today's episode 59.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: Is this is this 59?
5:17
SPEAKER_02: Is fifty nine, yeah.
5:18
SPEAKER_02: Okay I double checked right before we got on.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
5:21
SPEAKER_00: So uh episode 59.
5:23
SPEAKER_00: Um today.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: Now, uh a couple of weeks ago we did uh authors who committed murder.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was a good one.
5:30
SPEAKER_00: And that was a that was a fun one.
5:31
SPEAKER_00: And today we're gonna kind of flip the script a little bit.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna be talking about authors who wrote uh best-selling books while in prison.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: Now, when I started writing this, it was murderers who wrote best-selling books while in prison.
5:47
SPEAKER_00: Did you add other stuff in prison?
5:49
SPEAKER_02: I actually found some really juicy stuff.
5:51
SPEAKER_02: It wasn't just murders, there were lots of different crimes.
5:54
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this started out as murderers who wrote best-selling books while in prison, but now we've extended it to uh criminals, I guess, who have they're pretty bad criminals.
6:03
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
6:03
SPEAKER_02: And that there are some murders, yeah.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's the way it was started, yeah.
6:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
6:07
SPEAKER_02: So, okay, so one one whose name everybody's going to know was in prison for gross indecency.
6:13
SPEAKER_00: Great.
6:14
SPEAKER_00: Well, Angie, why don't you kick us off here?
6:16
SPEAKER_02: Well, here's some of the stories we're going to cover today, and I'm not going to tell you who in the beginning.
6:21
SPEAKER_02: Who was the best known author of all time who wrote his quote books in prison?
6:25
SPEAKER_02: Think about that for a second.
6:26
SPEAKER_02: Some of you may be able to be able to figure that out.
6:29
SPEAKER_02: Which author landed a traditional publishing contract for her prison memoir, ended up selling more than a million copies?
6:35
SPEAKER_02: Hint.
6:36
SPEAKER_02: Her book.
6:38
SPEAKER_02: Sorry, Brian, I just vented the screen.
6:41
SPEAKER_02: Hint, her book was turned into a very popular and Emmy Award-winning TV series.
6:45
SPEAKER_02: Which prison penning author, I came up with that prison penning.
6:48
SPEAKER_02: Prison penning uh got out early because famous author Norman Mailer thought he had talent.
6:54
SPEAKER_02: And why did that author end up going back to prison later?
6:58
SPEAKER_02: Which famous author was previously at age 17 the youngest inmate ever at Sam Quentin?
7:04
SPEAKER_02: Which preacher wrote a best-selling book and many others while he spent 12 years in prison for preaching?
7:10
SPEAKER_02: Which two authors started their own separate multimillion dollar publishing empires after getting out of prison?
7:15
SPEAKER_02: That's a pretty interesting story.
7:16
SPEAKER_02: Two interesting stories.
7:17
SPEAKER_02: What did Nelson Mandela write in prison?
7:20
SPEAKER_02: Why did Oscar Wilde write what did Oscar Wilde write while he was in prison for gross indecency?
7:26
SPEAKER_02: That's who that was.
7:28
SPEAKER_02: Which best-selling author got his nickname at age 13 after beating and stomping a robbery victim, leaving him disfigured?
7:35
SPEAKER_00: 13.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
7:37
SPEAKER_02: Started early.
7:38
SPEAKER_02: Why was one well-known politician and author scandalously imprisoned for perjury?
7:42
SPEAKER_02: That's that's pretty interesting.
7:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
7:44
SPEAKER_02: Which best-selling author wrote very fast one book a month to support his drug habit?
7:50
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you man, you just start digging deep, you find all kinds of other uh all kinds of really juicy stories.
7:55
SPEAKER_02: But and we've got those and more, but that's that's that's probably the most interesting ones we're covering today.
8:00
SPEAKER_02: So who should we talk about first?
8:02
SPEAKER_00: Well, let's go way back in history.
8:05
SPEAKER_02: Probably the best known prisoner in history wrote part of what became the best-selling book of all time, which was the Holy Bible, and that was John the Apostle.
8:13
SPEAKER_02: He wrote Gospel of John, first John, Second John, Third John, and part uh he wrote Book of Revelation.
8:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Revelation, yeah.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: Which it's actually my favorite.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: He was on the island of Patmos when he uh they they weren't nice to him then.
8:25
SPEAKER_00: He didn't get home home confinement for that one.
8:28
SPEAKER_00: They was he was put on a uh deserted island or a prison island.
8:32
SPEAKER_00: Right.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: Um next up, which author landed a traditional publishing contract for her prison memoir and ended up selling more than one million copies.
8:45
SPEAKER_00: Now this book was turned into a very popular TV series, and we're sure you've heard of it.
8:53
SPEAKER_00: The name is Orange is the New Black.
8:55
SPEAKER_02: I love that show.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: Um Piper Kerman uh became romantically involved with a drug dealer.
9:03
SPEAKER_00: A female drug dealer.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: A female drug dealer.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: And then Piper got into the business of laundering money for the drug business, and she got caught, of course.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh, she was only sentenced to 15 months in prison, but while she was there, um she created a website called The Pipe Bomb, which I'm I'm really shocked that they let her on the internet go.
9:26
SPEAKER_00: Go on the first go on the internet, and secondly, create a website called The Pipe Bomb.
9:32
SPEAKER_02: I know.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: But there she would write about her prison experiences, and she later turned her stories into a book she called Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Woman's Prison.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it was published by Spiegel and Growl and went on to become a New York Times bestseller, which sold more than one million copies.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: And then the TV adaptation, Orange is the New Black, on Netflix won four Emmy Awards.
10:01
SPEAKER_02: You know, I never read the books, book, but I love the show.
10:04
SPEAKER_02: It was a great show.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: Now, uh, next one.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: Jack Henry Abbott.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: Now, Angie had mentioned Jack Henry Abbott at the end of our podcast about uh authors who committed murder, but again, this is this is actually a murderer who became an author.
10:21
SPEAKER_01: Right.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: Um, and and he he was not a nice guy.
10:25
SPEAKER_00: Um, he grew up in foster homes uh and ended up in juvenile detention at age 12.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: Um he was he he tried to escape and got beat up for that.
10:36
SPEAKER_00: This was back in the if I recall, he was born around 19 oh geez, like 1930s, 1940s.
10:44
SPEAKER_00: So this uh this when he was in prison or even when he was a uh uh a juvenile delinquent, yeah, this is when they were these were really rough places.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: They didn't have the laws we have now.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and um getting smacked around was a very common thing back then uh when you were in prison uh by the guards.
11:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:05
SPEAKER_00: Um he was placed in isolation at twelve years old.
11:10
SPEAKER_00: Again at 12 years old.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: Uh he was later released, but at age 19, he broke into a shoe store and he sol stole a bunch of blank checks.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: Now, after getting caught using those checks, he was sentenced to five years in the Utah State Penitentiary, which, yeah, you know, it's ain't bad.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, stealing checks, everybody does that.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: So, but while he was in there, he stabbed a fellow inmate and that guy died.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: And so Jack then got an additional three to twenty years, which would have meant three years mandatory up to twenty years uh for stabbing this guy.
11:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, and during that time, he severely injured injured another inmate during a fight.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: He spit in the face of a guard, he escaped.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: While he was on the lamb, he robbed some banks and was eventually recaptured, and that earned him another 19 years.
12:06
SPEAKER_02: Is anybody keeping track of the math?
12:08
SPEAKER_00: I've lost I've lost track.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how long he's got now.
12:11
SPEAKER_02: But what a guy.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: So while doing his time in Utah, uh Abbott reached out to Norman Mailer.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: Um Mailer was the was the author of the book The Executioner's Song, and Mailer also wrote a Marilyn Monroe biography and several other books.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: Co-founded, he he he co-founded the The Village Voice, and everybody, I think everybody's heard of The Village Voice, right?
12:40
SPEAKER_00: And he wrote several columns, articles, and counterculture essays, and he even directed a few movies.
12:46
SPEAKER_02: He was very, very well known.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: Now, based on Abbott's letters, Mailer thought he had found a strong example of raw talent here.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: And he continued to correspond with Abbott, and even he took him under his wing and taught him about writing.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: And after that, while still serving time, Abbott started writing the memo his memoirs about life in prison.
13:06
SPEAKER_00: Later, Mailer becomes begins to advocate for Abbott's release.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: Uh, he writes articles about Abbott's literary gifts and even guaranteed Abbott a job as a research assistant once he got out of prison.
13:21
SPEAKER_02: And I'd be afraid to hire somebody.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: I know, no kidding.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: It's like, you know, but this is, you know, this is something these artsy fartsy people tend to do is they find somebody with some kind of you know artistic talent and they assume that that just absolves them of all other personality defects.
13:38
SPEAKER_02: Right.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: It's like a mad dog is a mad dog.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: I don't care if he can sit when you tell him to.
13:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: Um, but due to Maylor's advocacy, uh Abbott was paroled and relocated to a halfway house in Manhattan, New York.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: Now, soon after, uh, Abbott published his memoirs titled In the Belly of the Beast.
14:01
SPEAKER_00: Now, critics go gaga over this, right?
14:04
SPEAKER_00: They loved Abbott's work.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: The New York Times writer Terrence De uh De Pres Depre, is that how you pronounce it?
14:12
SPEAKER_00: Good.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: Um, called Abbott an exceptional man with an exceptional liber literary gift.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: Now, Depre's fawning slobber fest was was published on July 19 of 1981.
14:27
SPEAKER_02: I was gonna say I thought all this stuff was happening in the late mid to late 70s, but yeah, yeah, he was older at this point.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, I was I was 11 years old at that time.
14:35
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: Um, but he would he'd have to eat those words later.
14:39
SPEAKER_00: The New York Times writer would the very next day yeah, on July 8th, 8th.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: Well, no, so the day before this went out, again, d depress uh depre says that he's an exceptional man with exceptional literary gifts and he's such a wonderful writer, and da da da da da da da da.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: Well, the day before that got published You didn't know what the guy was up to 18th.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: Abbott went into the Benny Bon Cafe at around 5 a.m.
15:11
SPEAKER_00: Now, what the hell is he doing out of a halfway house at 5 a.m.?
15:15
SPEAKER_02: Right, don't they like make you be there from certain times?
15:18
SPEAKER_00: I thought you had to be like there at least from sunup to sun or sundown to sun up, but you know, unless you had a job specifically that you're going to.
15:24
SPEAKER_00: I don't know why he's wandering around going in a cafe.
15:26
SPEAKER_02: They got like a curfew or something, right?
15:28
SPEAKER_00: So while Abbott's in this in this um cafe, he asked the cafe manager, 22-year-old Richard Aiden, if he could use the staff bathroom.
15:40
SPEAKER_02: Why did he need the staff bathroom?
15:42
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm just gonna have to assume that maybe they didn't have a customer bathroom or maybe it was out of order or something.
15:49
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't able to find any information on why.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: Maybe he's just a jerk that way.
15:56
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, uh Aiden, the manager, refused uh to let him use the the staff restroom, and an argument ensued.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: Uh somehow ended up in an alleyway outside the cafe, and Abbott stabbed Aiden in the heart, killing him almost instantly.
16:13
SPEAKER_02: Again, what a guy.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: So, so much for the exceptional literary man.
16:17
SPEAKER_02: Right.
16:17
SPEAKER_00: Right?
16:18
SPEAKER_00: So Abbott fled the scene but was later caught and arrested once again.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: Now, his 1982 trial became a media spectacle uh uh because it was attended by all these celebrities who had championed his cause.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: Of course, right?
16:31
SPEAKER_00: And they still weren't ready to say, okay, yeah, he's a bad dude.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he's a dirtbag.
16:36
SPEAKER_02: What about this poor 22-year-old guy working at the cafe?
16:40
SPEAKER_00: During the trial, Abbott uh called the murder, quote, a tragic misunderstanding.
16:45
SPEAKER_02: You know, I don't I've had misunderstandings of people before, but I've never stabbed them in an alleyway.
16:50
SPEAKER_02: Right, yeah.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: Um Mailer made a statement at the trial, which I think is just just disgusting.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: Uh defending Abbott by saying, uh, culture is worth a little risk.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:03
SPEAKER_00: Tell that, tell that to the dead guy's widow.
17:06
SPEAKER_02: Right.
17:06
unknown: Yeah.
17:07
SPEAKER_00: Abbott went back to prison with a 15-year-old to life sentence.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: Now we're talking.
17:13
SPEAKER_01: Right.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: Um in February 2002, he committed suicide.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he committed uh suicide at age 58.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I guess he realized he wasn't going to get out again.
17:26
SPEAKER_01: No.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: So um now in 1990, uh, Aiden's widow uh filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Abbott.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: Back then, it was determined that In the Belly of the Beast had sold around 125,000 copies.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: She won the suit with the court awarding her nearly$7.6 million in damages, but I'm sure she probably didn't see a whole lot of that.
17:50
SPEAKER_02: Right.
17:51
SPEAKER_02: Well, I don't know.
17:53
SPEAKER_02: Uh, which famous author was previously at age 17 the youngest inmate ever at San Quentin.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: I know, I know.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: What's his name?
18:00
SPEAKER_00: Well, but I looked it up.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: You go ahead and talk about Edward Bunker.
18:06
SPEAKER_02: Edward Bunker.
18:07
SPEAKER_02: There's another famous movie star with the character's last name, a bunker.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: Are you thinking Archie Bunker?
18:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: Well, that was actually a character, not a person.
18:17
SPEAKER_02: I said the author's uh the the uh the I said the wrong thing.
18:21
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
18:21
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
18:22
SPEAKER_02: Edward Bunker had two drunkard that almost rhymes.
18:27
SPEAKER_00: Bunker had two drunkards for parents.
18:29
SPEAKER_02: Edward Bunker had two drunkard parents.
18:32
SPEAKER_02: So he started running away at age five.
18:34
SPEAKER_02: Now that's really sad.
18:35
SPEAKER_02: That's yeah.
18:36
SPEAKER_02: He was put into a boarding school well, they would haul him back home, you know.
18:40
SPEAKER_02: He was put into a boarding school, boarding home um with other boys at the age of eleven after he assaulted his father.
18:46
SPEAKER_02: Uh at least he waited until he was a little bit bigger.
18:48
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
18:50
SPEAKER_02: He later attended a military school, but ran away and ended up living in a hobo camp later.
18:55
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
18:55
SPEAKER_02: Now, due to mistreatment and abuse, he had, of course, developed a lifelong distrust for authority and institutions.
19:02
SPEAKER_02: However, he was extremely intelligent.
19:04
SPEAKER_02: His IQ was 152.
19:06
SPEAKER_02: That's smart.
19:06
SPEAKER_02: That's bigger than mine.
19:10
SPEAKER_02: But he grew up among among hardened criminals.
19:13
SPEAKER_02: You know, you grew up in that environment with all those other kids at reform school, then you end up with a few.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: Right, yeah.
19:23
SPEAKER_02: But okay, let's go back a little bit.
19:24
SPEAKER_02: Um while he was at the McKinley Home for Boys, he got to meet silent screen star Louise Fazenda, and she was the wife of producer Hal Wallace.
19:34
SPEAKER_02: They were the couple with were benefactors for the Home for Boys, and Louise, this is very sweet, gave Edward Bunker support and encouragement and a portable typewriter.
19:44
SPEAKER_02: How sweet is that?
19:45
SPEAKER_02: A dictionary, a thesaurus, and a subscription to the Sunday New York Times.
19:49
SPEAKER_02: I mean, what this one lady reached out and really tried to help him, this little boy.
19:54
SPEAKER_02: He later enrolled in correspondence course, uh, correspondence courses, and one was freshman English, and he literally had to sell his blood to pay for postage.
20:04
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
20:05
SPEAKER_02: He really did that.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's dedication.
20:07
SPEAKER_00: That's true, yeah.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: You know, he he was serious about getting some kind of uh education there.
20:11
SPEAKER_02: So right.
20:12
SPEAKER_02: Uh so he sold his blood so he could buy stamps, and he used the stamps to mail assignments to the University of California, their freshman English correspondence course, and to submit his early unpublished fiction manuscripts to various publishers and magazines.
20:25
SPEAKER_02: Now think about this he's you know stuck where he's at.
20:29
SPEAKER_02: He's got one woman encouraging him and giving him resources, and he really took off with that.
20:34
SPEAKER_02: He he really wanted to make something of himself.
20:37
SPEAKER_02: But he didn't let his literary efforts get in the way of his law breaking.
20:41
SPEAKER_02: At the boys gotta have priorities.
20:43
SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
20:45
SPEAKER_02: So while he's doing all these really good things to try to become a famous writer, uh he stabbed a guard.
20:51
SPEAKER_02: That's not good.
20:52
SPEAKER_02: And that's when he was sent sent to St.
20:54
SPEAKER_02: Quentin at 17 years of age.
20:56
SPEAKER_02: He was the youngest ever inmate there.
21:00
SPEAKER_02: And but while he was there, he read five books a week.
21:03
SPEAKER_00: Which is pretty cool.
21:05
SPEAKER_00: Right.
21:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:06
SPEAKER_02: So he had decided to become a writer, and he cited inspiration from Carol Chessman, a death row inmate who wrote a memoir called Cell 2455 Death Row.
21:16
SPEAKER_02: You know, I haven't heard of that book before, but I think I'm gonna buy it.
21:19
SPEAKER_02: That sounds interesting.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: Despite the name, that was a guy uh named Carol Chessman.
21:24
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, it's it's not the girl's name up spelling of Carol, yeah.
21:27
SPEAKER_02: Uh he also followed other historical prison writers.
21:29
SPEAKER_02: There's a lot.
21:30
SPEAKER_02: We're only covering a handful to these.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
21:42
SPEAKER_02: There's a lot.
21:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
21:43
SPEAKER_02: Well, he was eventually paroled, but he couldn't stop committing crimes, starting to see a pattern here, huh?
21:49
SPEAKER_02: He went back to jail but escaped.
21:50
SPEAKER_02: Then he robbed a bank.
21:52
SPEAKER_02: Sounds like the last guy we talked about.
21:53
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, kind of got involved with a ch in a chase with the police.
21:57
SPEAKER_02: He later faked a suicide attempt and claimed that the captain.
22:00
SPEAKER_02: Church had inserted a radio in his head and got himself declared criminally insane.
22:05
SPEAKER_02: So he was a genius.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: And he used that.
22:12
SPEAKER_00: Look at that.
22:14
SPEAKER_02: So he got released, but you know, everybody needs to make a living.
22:18
SPEAKER_02: He got back into the drug business and he got arrested again.
22:22
SPEAKER_02: So during that stint in prison, um, Bunker wrote his first novel, So Fierce.
22:27
SPEAKER_02: No Beast, So Fierce.
22:28
SPEAKER_02: Sorry, No Beast, So Fierce.
22:30
SPEAKER_02: Later, Dustin Hoffman purchased the film rights to that.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: Well, now you're now you're cooking.
22:34
SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
22:35
SPEAKER_02: Novelist James Ellroy said it was, quote, quite simply one of the great crime novels of the past 30 years, perhaps the best novel of the LA underground world ever.
22:45
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
22:46
SPEAKER_02: So what you know?
22:48
SPEAKER_02: He was back in prison.
22:48
SPEAKER_02: Well, he he got paroled again in 1975.
22:52
SPEAKER_02: He had spent 18 years of his life in various institutions.
22:55
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
22:55
SPEAKER_02: I know.
22:56
SPEAKER_02: But then he found honest ways to make a living.
22:58
SPEAKER_02: He started writing and acting.
23:00
SPEAKER_02: And he published his second novel novel, Animal Factory, and that had favorable reviews.
23:06
SPEAKER_02: Following year, he released Straight Time.
23:08
SPEAKER_02: That was a film adaptation of No No Beast So Fierce.
23:12
SPEAKER_02: He went on to appear in numerous movies and even wrote screenplays.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: You know who else uh got their start in acting thanks to Mr.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: Bunker here?
23:22
SPEAKER_01: Who?
23:23
SPEAKER_00: Danny Trejo.
23:24
SPEAKER_01: Really?
23:25
SPEAKER_00: He was he Bunker knew him in prison.
23:28
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: Danny Trejo was doing time.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: Now I didn't I didn't dig into it, but he was doing time, got to know this guy.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: This guy starts making movies.
23:36
SPEAKER_00: And when Danny Trejo gets out, he's like, Hey, you want to you want to come get into one of my movies here?
23:41
SPEAKER_00: And that's really Trejo becomes an actor.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: Good for him.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
23:45
SPEAKER_02: Um, he always said that most of his writing was based on actual events and people he had known.
23:49
SPEAKER_02: You know, that's the easiest way to write.
23:51
SPEAKER_02: You know, just picture something or mine or something that happened.
23:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
23:55
SPEAKER_02: He died in 2005.
23:57
SPEAKER_02: Um, he had diabetes and he had surgery on his legs or something, and the surgery didn't work.
24:02
SPEAKER_02: Uh, he was ended up being involved in 24 films and wrote seven novels.
24:06
SPEAKER_02: So here was his career.
24:07
SPEAKER_02: He definitely turned himself around.
24:09
SPEAKER_02: Career kid criminal.
24:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:10
SPEAKER_02: Who and one person, one per I took one person to reach out and help him turn his life around and be a better person.
24:16
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
24:17
SPEAKER_02: He stumbled a few times.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: He he definitely stumbled a few times, but I mean that's that's definitely a good turnaround story.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: Right.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: You know.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: You want to ask me the question?
24:27
SPEAKER_02: Well, I was gonna well, yeah, we started out with which preacher wrote a best-selling book and many others while he spent 12 years in prison for preaching.
24:35
SPEAKER_02: Does anybody know who that is?
24:38
SPEAKER_02: No, no, who is it, Brian?
24:40
SPEAKER_00: Who is John Bunyan?
24:43
SPEAKER_02: Isn't that the guy who used to cut down trees?
24:46
SPEAKER_00: That would be Paul Bunyan and his blue ox.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: And I don't babe the blue ox.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: Um, no, uh, John Bunyan um was a preacher way back when in the 1600s.
25:01
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever heard of a book called The Pilgrim's Progress?
25:06
SPEAKER_02: Yes, I have.
25:07
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: It's a Christian uh allegory presented as a dream sequence that's narrated by an obnis uh um omniscient that's a hard word.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, narrator.
25:20
SPEAKER_00: Um Pilgrim's Progress was written by John Bunyan in the year 1678.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's been translated into over 200 languages, and get this, it has never been out of print.
25:35
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
25:35
SPEAKER_02: Now many other publishers have picked up that dome the public domain version whenever you published it.
25:40
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, it just keeps selling.
25:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
25:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
25:42
SPEAKER_02: Hundreds of years later.
25:43
SPEAKER_00: Um Paul Bunyan Bunyan was an English non-conformist preacher in Britain, and and this was this was back in the time when um English law said that the only legitimate church was the Church of England.
26:00
SPEAKER_01: Right.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: And uh Bunyan's like, uh, nope, I don't agree with the Church of England, so I'm gonna go preach as a Protestant.
26:08
SPEAKER_00: And and he was in areas that you could kind of you know stay off the radar while you're preaching Protestant stuff.
26:14
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, he wrote nearly 60 titles, most of which were expanded sermons.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: That means they're long.
26:21
SPEAKER_01: Really long sermons, yeah.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: Those were back in the days where they had guys walking up the aisles with a big stick to poke you if you're falling asleep, right?
26:30
SPEAKER_00: Um in the 16 in 1660, the British monarchy was restored, and the nonconformists basically became outlawed.
26:41
SPEAKER_00: Um again, there was there was a civil war going on, and during the time of the Civil War, nonconformists were tolerated.
26:53
SPEAKER_00: I think depending on what side, what what geographic area you're in and who controlled it.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: But once once the war was over, the British monarchy took took power again, and um again the Church of England was the only accepted uh church.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: Bunyan refused to agree to give up preaching.
27:14
SPEAKER_02: So he was preaching, he was a nonconformist preacher, and they picked him up and threw him in prison.
27:21
SPEAKER_02: He wasn't supposed to be there that long, and he refused to stop preaching, so they kept him in there for twelve years, and it was really hard on his wife and children.
27:29
SPEAKER_02: His first wife had died, he got remarried, and I think he ended up with five kids, but he eventually spent twelve years in prison, and he only got out after the monarchy was restored, and then they said, Oh, okay, we're gonna allow more than one religion.
27:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was so it was during this extended incarceration that he wrote Grace Abounding and started to work on the Pilgrim's Progress and many others.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh by that time, there was a mood of increasing religious toleration in the country.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: Uh Bunyan was freed on May 1672 and immediately obtained a license to preach.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:08
SPEAKER_00: Uh he traveled to other countries on horseback to share the good word, and he was effectually known as Bishop Bunyan.
28:15
SPEAKER_00: Might like that.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: Um, Pilgrim's Progress uh has sold over 250 million copies worldwide since it was first published in 1678.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: That's incredible.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: That's a lot of copies.
28:27
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
28:28
SPEAKER_02: Hey, you ever heard of Street Lit?
28:30
SPEAKER_00: I think I've, yeah.
28:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's that's a genre.
28:33
SPEAKER_02: It's also known as urban fiction.
28:35
SPEAKER_02: And that came about because prisoners would write their stories on notepads and prison typewriters.
28:40
SPEAKER_02: Of course, they weren't getting any interest from traditional publishers because you know they were in prison.
28:45
SPEAKER_02: So the authors, the the these authors would get out of prison and they would self-publish their books.
28:49
SPEAKER_02: They would pay to print their own books.
28:50
SPEAKER_02: And this is back before Print on Demand when this started, right?
28:53
SPEAKER_02: And they would drive around and sell the books out of their cars, and they became like instant hits.
28:59
SPEAKER_02: It was like an underground industry, and people were very interested in it.
29:03
SPEAKER_02: And with the say when the sales started taking off for Street Lit, you know, the publishing industry couldn't ignore it anymore.
29:11
SPEAKER_02: Now there were two authors.
29:13
SPEAKER_02: Um, one was named Vicki Stringer, she's the author of Let That Be a Reason.
29:17
SPEAKER_02: And there was Wajita Clark who wrote Thugs and the Women Who Love Them.
29:22
SPEAKER_02: Now that's a good title.
29:23
SPEAKER_02: I like that.
29:24
SPEAKER_02: Thugs and the Women Who Love Them.
29:26
SPEAKER_02: They each got out of they wrote their books in prison, got out of prison, printed their own books, sold them directly out of the trunks of their cars at barbershops and beauty salons on inner city street corners, and the books were selling faster than the authors could get them printed, get more copies printed.
29:43
SPEAKER_02: But um uh let's get back to Vicki Stringer.
29:46
SPEAKER_02: She dropped out of college and became enmeshed in the drug trade.
29:49
SPEAKER_02: There's another pattern we're seeing.
29:51
SPEAKER_02: She operated a multi-state drug ring.
29:54
SPEAKER_02: She was born an entrepreneur.
29:56
SPEAKER_02: I mean, she also ran an escort service.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: You gotta you gotta know your thing there.
30:02
SPEAKER_00: If you're gonna if you're gonna boy, she just uh branching out into life.
30:06
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
30:07
SPEAKER_02: So she had an escort service as well, and her entrepreneurial skills were bringing in 30,000 a week.
30:13
SPEAKER_02: That was a lot back then.
30:15
SPEAKER_02: You know, but one day she accidentally sold a kilo of coke to an undercover officer.
30:20
SPEAKER_02: Oops.
30:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
30:22
SPEAKER_02: Sentenced to seven years in prison, and while she was behind bars, she wrote her fiction novel, Let That Be the Reason, in long hand in the prison library.
30:30
SPEAKER_02: She didn't have access to a computer like the other one.
30:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
30:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
30:33
SPEAKER_02: It was autobiographical and a warning to other women about the dangers of doing and selling drugs.
30:38
SPEAKER_02: So she was trying to help other women.
30:40
SPEAKER_02: She was she was turning her life around.
30:42
SPEAKER_02: So she tried to get it published when she was released, but she received 26 rejection letters, and all authors know how that feels.
30:50
SPEAKER_02: She then used her own sweets.
30:54
SPEAKER_02: She then used her own street smarts and earned enough money to have her books printed.
31:00
SPEAKER_02: Then she traveled all over the country.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: I wonder what she did to earn that money.
31:04
SPEAKER_02: You know, I tried to find that and I couldn't.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, one kilo of cocaine will get you a lot of books.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, as long as you're not selling it to the wrong person.
31:16
SPEAKER_02: Right.
31:17
SPEAKER_02: So she traveled all over the country.
31:21
SPEAKER_02: She had a bunch of copies in her trunk.
31:23
SPEAKER_02: She went to barber and beauty shops, and um there was somewhere else that she was selling.
31:29
SPEAKER_02: No, street corners in the urban area of street corners.
31:32
SPEAKER_02: You know, yeah, I'd probably rather buy a book than something from an Avon lady on the street corners.
31:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
31:37
SPEAKER_02: Uh her self-published book became an underground sensation and ended up as a self-published book on the essence bestseller list.
31:45
SPEAKER_02: And that's when she decided, you know, this is really working for me.
31:49
SPEAKER_02: I think I can do this for other authors as well.
31:51
SPEAKER_02: And she took other streetlit authors under her wing.
31:54
SPEAKER_02: She founded Triple Crown Publications.
31:57
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
31:57
SPEAKER_02: The business expanded rapidly, rapidly after Stringer published a manuscript by a prison writer named Kawan.
32:03
SPEAKER_02: K apostrophe W-A-N.
32:05
SPEAKER_02: Kowan.
32:06
SPEAKER_02: The name of the book is that Gook.
32:08
SPEAKER_02: That gook gangsta.
32:10
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: That sounds about right.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that gook.
32:16
SPEAKER_02: That book sold more than 10,000 copies in one month.
32:19
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
32:19
SPEAKER_02: After that, Triple Crown Publications became a multi-million dollar empire in the publishing industry.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: We're in the wrong genres.
32:27
SPEAKER_02: All right.
32:27
SPEAKER_02: Publishing books by dozens of streetlit authors.
32:29
SPEAKER_02: So she really turned her life around and helped other people.
32:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so Wajita Clark was imprisoned for wire fraud uh before she launched W.
32:41
SPEAKER_00: Clark Publishing, where she became known as the Queen of Street Lit.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: That's a nice title.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: Uh before that, she was in prison.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: She wrote multiple books that later became New York Timestellers.
32:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, she wrote all of her books in prison.
32:54
SPEAKER_02: And then when she got out and she self-published, then they became New York Times bestsellers.
32:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
32:59
SPEAKER_00: Both companies' books ended up in brick and mortar bookstore chains.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:04
SPEAKER_00: Because the success of those companies in the street-lit genre, Simon and Schuster and Harper and Collins began signing street-lit authors for massive six-figure contracts.
33:16
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
33:16
SPEAKER_00: Street-lit titles then routinely dominated the New York Times, Essence and Black Expression's bestseller lists.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: The genre now has a permanent place in American literature.
33:27
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, good for them.
33:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
33:29
SPEAKER_02: Two women completely turn their lives around.
33:31
SPEAKER_02: I'd like to know why she was in prison for what was it?
33:34
SPEAKER_02: Uh oh wire fraud.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: I mean she scammed somebody.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, probably.
33:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:40
SPEAKER_02: So hey, uh Nelson Mandela, this is actually pretty widely known, but we wanted to include it, wrote part of his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom while imprisoned in Robin Island.
33:52
SPEAKER_02: And this was one of the juiciest ones.
33:56
SPEAKER_02: Oscar Wilde was imprisoned for gross indecency for having relations with other men.
34:00
SPEAKER_02: That was back when it was illegal to do that.
34:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
34:03
SPEAKER_02: Uh he was sentenced to two years of hard labor, and while there, he wrote De De Profundus or De Profundi.
34:09
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
34:10
SPEAKER_02: And that was continuously in print for a very long time.
34:13
SPEAKER_02: So gotcha.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: Um here's another spicy one.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: John Celand wrote Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure.
34:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm glad you're reading this one.
34:26
SPEAKER_00: And he was now he was in the fleet debtors prison for a year, which tells you this took place a while back.
34:34
SPEAKER_00: Right.
34:35
SPEAKER_00: I think in the entire 20th century, we did not have debtors' prisons.
34:39
SPEAKER_00: Right.
34:39
SPEAKER_00: Um, it said now it now when you you have to think about the times then, it was a different time and to write a book about a quote woman of pleasure that that was that was uh the the equivalent of say Hustler magazine today back before they had photographs.
35:00
SPEAKER_00: You know, back when when in the time where they didn't have you know photographs, uh a book like this was like scandalous.
35:08
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's probably why it sold so well.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: Um, it said the book was a literary work of pornography, see.
35:14
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: Uh with lots of sex, but no rude words.
35:19
SPEAKER_02: Quote, no rude word.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: Now, hmm.
35:22
SPEAKER_02: I guess that's polite porn.
35:24
SPEAKER_00: I I guess it's polite porn.
35:26
SPEAKER_02: Polite porn.
35:27
SPEAKER_00: All right.
35:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
35:28
SPEAKER_00: Um, because the novel rejected traditional sexual morality and chastity codes, it became one of the most heavily prosecuted and banned books in history, facing legal battles spanning from 18th century privy counsel uh arrests to landmark 20th century U.S.
35:47
SPEAKER_00: Supreme Court obscenity rulings like memoirs versus Massachusetts.
35:52
SPEAKER_00: And when I hear privy counsel, that tells me this was uh 18th century, that would have been in England.
35:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but in the 20th century, that book was involved in a lawsuit.
36:02
SPEAKER_02: Memoirs versus Massachusetts, yeah.
36:04
SPEAKER_00: In the 20th century.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: After that case, more than two million copies were sold in England alone.
36:09
SPEAKER_02: Well, banned books, man, they sell.
36:13
SPEAKER_00: They were Jonesing for their polite porn.
36:16
SPEAKER_02: Right.
36:17
SPEAKER_02: Miguel de Cervantes.
36:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that guy.
36:21
SPEAKER_02: We've actually talked about him before, yeah.
36:23
SPEAKER_02: He wrote Don Quixote while he was imprisoned in Seville.
36:27
SPEAKER_02: And Don Quixote is one of the best-selling novels of all time, having sold more than 500 million copies.
36:33
SPEAKER_00: And I remember um Mr.
36:35
SPEAKER_00: Bunker's story, uh, Miguel de Cervantes was one of the ones listed as the uh as one of the prison authors that he studied up on and learned from.
36:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
36:45
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
36:47
SPEAKER_00: William Sidney Porter, who wrote under the pseudonym O.
36:51
SPEAKER_00: Henry, began writing while incarcerated in Ohio for embezzlement.
36:57
SPEAKER_00: There, he wrote the classic Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking.
37:01
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
37:02
SPEAKER_02: What do you think that's about?
37:06
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, but you I'm sure you had a lot of fun studying up on this one.
37:12
SPEAKER_00: And other manuscripts.
37:14
SPEAKER_00: While while that and his other books were very popular, more than five million copies of his works were sold in America after his death.
37:22
SPEAKER_02: That really sucks when they buy your book after you're already gone.
37:25
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I want to do this one.
37:26
SPEAKER_00: I want to do this one.
37:27
SPEAKER_02: Oh.
37:28
SPEAKER_02: Marquis de Sade.
37:30
SPEAKER_02: Right ahead.
37:30
SPEAKER_02: Have you ever heard of him?
37:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I actually recognize the name.
37:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
37:33
SPEAKER_00: I think most people have.
37:35
SPEAKER_00: Uh wrote many philosophical works, including portions of his book, 120 Days of Sodom.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: While imprisoned in the Bastille and other fortresses, he spent much of his adult life in prison and wrote most of his novels there.
37:51
SPEAKER_00: His sexual his sexually explicit narratives were composed uh to fill the tedious hours and to compensate for the absence of women.
38:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh he's also the author of a book called Justine.
38:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's my middle name.
38:05
SPEAKER_02: No relation whatsoever.
38:06
SPEAKER_02: None, no relation whatsoever.
38:08
SPEAKER_00: But we were talking about He was, I mean, you gotta think about this.
38:13
SPEAKER_00: This was oh gosh, I don't know what century he was in, but this was early France, where you know everybody was dirty.
38:22
SPEAKER_02: Right, yeah.
38:23
SPEAKER_00: And to think that he was offensive.
38:25
SPEAKER_00: Right.
38:26
SPEAKER_00: He must have really uh yeah.
38:28
SPEAKER_02: No one around any people in prison are so bored that they just write stories to entertain themselves.
38:34
SPEAKER_02: Because they don't, because they're in the absence of women.
38:36
SPEAKER_00: I I guess I yeah, that's one way to do it, I suppose.
38:40
SPEAKER_02: Henry Charrier, it's a French name, wrote the international best-selling autobiographical adventure novel Papillon, P-A-P-I-L-L-O-N, while imprisoned.
38:52
SPEAKER_02: And following his eventual escape and release, uh he his book became a number one bestseller in France for 21 weeks.
39:01
SPEAKER_02: It has since sold more than 13 million copies worldwide, and it's in 30 languages.
39:06
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
39:06
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
39:08
SPEAKER_00: Sanyika Shakur, writing under the pseudonym Monster Cody.
39:14
SPEAKER_02: That's easier to say.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: Much better.
39:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:17
SPEAKER_00: Um, was a former member of the Los Angeles-based Eight Tray Gangster Crips and a political activist.
39:23
SPEAKER_00: I know who this is.
39:25
SPEAKER_00: I I saw the cover of his book.
39:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm the one that did the research for this one.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, yeah.
39:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:30
SPEAKER_00: Um, this was actually sold in some of my um, well, Palette and Press is one of the ones that I looked at.
39:38
SPEAKER_00: There were you know various um publishers that put out cop books.
39:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:43
SPEAKER_00: And his book was one of the ones that to kind of help cops understand gang culture.
39:49
SPEAKER_00: Gang culture.
39:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:50
SPEAKER_00: Cool.
39:51
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, he got his nickname Monster Cody as a 13-year-old gang member when he beat and stomped a robbery victim until he was disfigured.
40:00
SPEAKER_00: He spent 36 months at San Quentin State Prison and five years at Pelican Bay State Prison.
40:05
SPEAKER_00: Pelican Bay is the topmost federal supermax prison.
40:11
SPEAKER_02: Really?
40:11
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's that's when you are you're you've hit the big time when you go there.
40:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
40:16
SPEAKER_00: You're you're the worst of the worst.
40:18
SPEAKER_00: Right.
40:20
SPEAKER_00: Um, and most of the time there was spent in solitary confinement.
40:25
SPEAKER_00: So he was the worst of the worst of the worst.
40:27
unknown: Okay.
40:27
SPEAKER_00: Um, that's where he wrote his memoir, Monster, an autobiography autobiography of an LA gang member.
40:33
SPEAKER_00: He claims he was transformed in prison.
40:36
SPEAKER_00: The book became a massive national bestseller and an essential raw text on gang culture.
40:41
SPEAKER_00: More than eight 300,000 copies, that's 300,000 copies, sold to the U.S.
40:47
SPEAKER_00: alone, and the author earned more than$800,000 on the book.
40:51
SPEAKER_02: Not bad.
40:52
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
40:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
40:53
SPEAKER_02: You ever heard of Jeffrey Archer?
40:56
unknown: No.
40:56
SPEAKER_02: Man, that's guy.
40:58
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
40:59
SPEAKER_02: He's he's dead now, so I can say whatever I want.
41:01
SPEAKER_02: Um he he was a British politician.
41:04
SPEAKER_02: All right.
41:05
SPEAKER_02: He was imprisoned from 20 2001 to 2003 for perjury.
41:10
SPEAKER_02: While locked up, he wrote the three-volume memoir called A Prison Diary.
41:14
SPEAKER_02: That's a good title.
41:15
SPEAKER_02: It was published later, and that one and his other books sold multi-million of copies and topped global bestseller charts.
41:23
SPEAKER_02: So what do you think the perjury charges were about?
41:27
SPEAKER_02: Well, he must have lied about something.
41:28
SPEAKER_02: He lied about something on stand.
41:31
SPEAKER_02: He had previously sued the Daily Star newspaper for libel after it alleged he had paid a sex worker.
41:37
SPEAKER_02: He won the case and was awarded 500,000 pounds in damages.
41:41
SPEAKER_02: However, later it came out that he had fabricated alibis and forged appointment book entries to win the trial.
41:49
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
41:50
SPEAKER_02: Including asking his friend to lie about their whereabouts.
41:53
SPEAKER_02: And his former secretary also stated she manufactured false diary entries under his instructions.
41:59
SPEAKER_02: So I guess what the paper said was true.
42:01
SPEAKER_02: I guess.
42:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
42:03
SPEAKER_02: Uh he died on October 5th of this year.
42:06
SPEAKER_02: He died nine days ago.
42:08
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
42:08
SPEAKER_02: Just nine days ago.
42:10
SPEAKER_02: And that was on the eve of the release of his new novel, Adam and Eve.
42:14
SPEAKER_02: According to Reuters, more than 300 million copies of his books have sold and uh have spent a total of five and a half years on the New York Times bestseller list.
42:23
SPEAKER_02: And his publisher's Harper Collins.
42:25
SPEAKER_02: So but yeah, he just died nine days ago.
42:27
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
42:27
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
42:28
SPEAKER_02: They said uh I don't know how he died, but his his agent said he had uh a book signing the day before that he didn't arrive at.
42:35
SPEAKER_00: So I guess he wasn't feeling very well.
42:38
SPEAKER_00: Let's see.
42:39
SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about Donald Goines.
42:41
SPEAKER_00: At age 15, he lied about his age to join the Air Force and fought in the Korean War.
42:46
SPEAKER_00: Good for him.
42:47
SPEAKER_00: While he was serving overseas, he became addicted to heroin.
42:50
SPEAKER_00: Not good for him.
42:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
42:52
SPEAKER_00: After receiving an honorable discharge, good for him.
42:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
42:57
SPEAKER_00: And in order to support his addiction, Goines committed crimes including pimping, larceny, robbery, illegal liquor manufacturing, and theft.
43:06
SPEAKER_00: Well, if you're gonna do it, go all the way.
43:08
SPEAKER_01: All right.
43:09
SPEAKER_00: He was sentenced to prison several times.
43:12
SPEAKER_00: Goines discovered his passion for writing while serving time at Michigan's Jackson Penitentiary.
43:18
SPEAKER_00: He originally wanted to write westerns, but later wrote gritty urban fiction masterpieces like Horson and Dope Fiend.
43:26
SPEAKER_00: Horson.
43:27
SPEAKER_00: That's one word.
43:27
SPEAKER_00: Horson and Dopefiend.
43:29
SPEAKER_02: Dopefiend, one word, yeah.
43:30
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
43:31
SPEAKER_00: Becoming one of the most enduring best-selling authors in African American street literature.
43:36
SPEAKER_00: He wrote 16 books total, and it's reported that he could write a book a month.
43:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
43:42
SPEAKER_00: According to Wikipedia, he wrote books quickly so he could afford his drug habit.
43:46
SPEAKER_00: That's unfortunate.
43:47
SPEAKER_02: I mean You know, whatever it takes.
43:51
SPEAKER_00: And and he was good.
43:52
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm just picturing somebody sitting there shooting up his heroin or snorting his coke or whatever.
43:57
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I gotta write some book.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: The book out.
44:01
SPEAKER_00: You know, I just I'm sorry.
44:03
SPEAKER_02: It's sad.
44:04
SPEAKER_00: Um his sister uh denounced that claim, though.
44:07
SPEAKER_00: He was writing books so fast that his publisher insisted he write some under a pseudonym because they were going on the market too fast.
44:14
SPEAKER_00: He and his wife were murdered in their Michigan apartment, and the perps were never caught.
44:19
SPEAKER_00: At his funeral, a relative placed a book with goines in the casket, uh, but it was stolen.
44:27
SPEAKER_00: What does that say about your funeral guest?
44:31
SPEAKER_02: Right.
44:32
SPEAKER_00: When somebody's gonna steal a book out of your casket.
44:35
SPEAKER_00: My God.
44:37
SPEAKER_00: Goine's entire catalog of 16 books has sold between five and ten million copies globally.
44:42
SPEAKER_02: Wow, that's a lot.
44:44
SPEAKER_00: Too many is not around to enjoy it.
44:46
SPEAKER_02: All right, yeah.
44:48
SPEAKER_02: Mark Chopper and I, you know, him and his wife getting murdered.
44:51
SPEAKER_02: I wonder if that was that was probably a drug deal gone bad.
44:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
44:54
SPEAKER_00: Or some other crime.
44:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
44:56
SPEAKER_02: Mark Chopper Reed, Chopper is the nickname.
45:01
SPEAKER_02: He was one of Australia's most notorious underworld figures, you know, gangsta.
45:05
SPEAKER_02: He was a gang member, a kidnapper, an armed robber, another nice guy.
45:10
SPEAKER_02: While serving time in a maximum security prison, he began dictating his memoirs, his debut book, Chopper from the Inside, became an instant bestseller, and spawned a highly successful true crime writing career.
45:21
SPEAKER_02: The 2000 film Chopper, have you seen that?
45:23
SPEAKER_03: Nope.
45:24
SPEAKER_02: Oh, that was based on his life.
45:25
SPEAKER_02: He also wrote a series of semi-autobiographical fiction crime novels and children's books.
45:30
SPEAKER_02: He wrote children's books.
45:31
SPEAKER_02: Isn't that sweet?
45:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
45:32
SPEAKER_00: Would you buy a quick book for your child from Chopper?
45:36
SPEAKER_02: Uh probably not.
45:38
SPEAKER_02: Uh Chopper from the Inside has sold more than 200,000 copies, while the entire series of Chopper books has sold over 500,000 copies worldwide.
45:46
SPEAKER_00: That's good sales.
45:47
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
45:49
SPEAKER_00: So Adolf Hitler wrote his first volume of Mein Kampf in 1924 while he was imprisoned at Landsberg Prison.
45:58
SPEAKER_02: He later wrote a second volume of it.
46:01
SPEAKER_02: Or a second edition.
46:02
SPEAKER_02: But yeah.
46:04
SPEAKER_02: So this wasn't a book, but Martin Luther King Jr.
46:08
SPEAKER_02: wrote letters from a Birmingham jail on newspaper margins and scraps of paper while he was in solitary confinement.
46:14
SPEAKER_02: I thought that was very interesting.
46:17
SPEAKER_02: The letter, written in response to a qua call for unity during the 1963 Birmingham campaign, was widely published and became an important text for the civil rights movement in the United States.
46:27
SPEAKER_02: The letter has been described as one of the most important histor important historical documents penned by a modern political prisoner and is considered a classic document of civil disobedience.
46:37
SPEAKER_02: And the fact that he wrote it on scraps of paper and corners of newspaper margins and stuff.
46:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
46:42
SPEAKER_00: All right.
46:42
SPEAKER_00: So Wally Lamb wasn't a prisoner.
46:45
SPEAKER_00: He actually worked at a women's prisoner.
46:47
SPEAKER_00: And the work, I couldn't keep it to myself, is a collection of twelve autobiographical essays written by females at the York Correctional Institution, and that's a maximum security prison in Niantic Nianticket, Connecticut.
47:06
SPEAKER_00: Wally Lamb ran a workshop there that encouraged creating creative writing, and he taught women how to find their voices and write about the trauma, abuse, poverty, and choices that led to their incarceration.
47:20
SPEAKER_00: Couldn't keep it to myself, sold 27,000 copies in the first 16 months.
47:25
SPEAKER_00: Wally Lamb's entire catalog of books has sold more than three million copies globally.
47:31
SPEAKER_02: So here was another good person teaching prisoners how to do creative writing.
47:36
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
47:37
SPEAKER_02: And teaching them how to write about their lives.
47:40
SPEAKER_00: I wonder if they got any money from these uh books he sold.
47:42
SPEAKER_02: I seriously doubt it.
47:45
SPEAKER_02: That's called an anthology when you put all those stories together into one book.
47:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but of course I he he could have compensated them for the story.
47:51
SPEAKER_00: Sure, yeah, he may have.
47:53
SPEAKER_02: But again, it sounds like a really good guy.
47:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
47:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
47:56
SPEAKER_02: And I tell you, when we were researching for this episode, there are so many more stories.
48:01
SPEAKER_02: Fascinating stories.
48:02
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of stuff has come out of prison.
48:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
48:05
SPEAKER_02: We've received manuscripts from prisoners.
48:06
SPEAKER_02: That happens all it jail mail.
48:09
SPEAKER_00: Most of them are not best-selling material.
48:12
SPEAKER_02: No.
48:13
SPEAKER_02: Uh we received one and we did publish the book.
48:18
SPEAKER_02: He had recently gotten out of prison and he was working with a woman, I think, from his church, and she was corresponding with us, and we were we were going back and forth.
48:26
SPEAKER_02: Well, they had a falling out and because she had she was taking care of him and he ended up going back to prison.
48:33
SPEAKER_02: He he broke another law and um and she said she wasn't gonna work on his book or with with him anymore.
48:40
SPEAKER_02: So now he emails me from prison.
48:42
SPEAKER_02: Nice guy.
48:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
48:44
SPEAKER_02: Just robbery, you know.
48:45
SPEAKER_00: But a lot of a lot of the the the uh manuscripts we get from prison just really aren't up to snuff.
48:51
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we you know you you might want to send them to Vicky Stringer or or Wahilda Clark.
48:57
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they'll you know put them in their street street lit Yeah, maybe um of them are but I mean seriously barely legible.
49:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's that's the thing is is a lot of them just don't make a lot of sense.
49:09
SPEAKER_00: They're not well done.
49:10
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, that's our list of uh criminals who wrote bestsellers in prison.
49:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
49:18
SPEAKER_02: So pretty interesting.
49:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, less interesting.
49:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
49:22
SPEAKER_00: And uh if you're not in prison and you want to get your you want to get your book out there to the to the people, uh come see us at booklocker.com.
49:31
SPEAKER_00: Uh again, we're gonna treat you right.
49:33
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49:36
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49:43
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49:49
SPEAKER_00: So um uh Better Business Bureau doesn't do stars, I have to remember that.
49:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's okay.
49:54
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50:00
SPEAKER_02: That's always been a rule of ours for 27 years, but we keep getting them and we post them on our website.
50:05
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50:10
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50:12
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50:21
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50:25
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50:35
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52:57
SPEAKER_00: All right.
52:58
SPEAKER_00: Well, that does it for this episode of the Writers Weekly Podcast.
53:01
SPEAKER_00: Hope y'all enjoyed uh our little walking through the trenches.
53:07
SPEAKER_02: Walking through the prison trenches.
53:08
SPEAKER_02: The prison trenches.
53:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, whatever.
53:10
SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is.
53:11
SPEAKER_00: So um, okay, and is uh next week gonna be our Halloween episode?
53:17
SPEAKER_02: Nope, that's the week after next.
53:18
SPEAKER_02: Week after next.
53:22
SPEAKER_02: The week before Halloween, and this is uh 2026 right now, if you're listening to us in the future.
53:28
SPEAKER_02: And it in Halloween this year is on a Saturday, and I think it's on October 31st.
53:32
SPEAKER_02: Is that right?
53:33
SPEAKER_00: The last I checked.
53:36
SPEAKER_02: So the week before that.
53:37
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, week after next.
53:39
SPEAKER_00: All right, thanks a lot for listening.
53:41
SPEAKER_00: We will see you all again on the Writers Weekly Podcast.
53:44
SPEAKER_00: Bye, everybody.