Meet the Speaker: Jean Trounstine

Jean Trounstine is a professor, author and activist who worked at Framingham Women’s Prison for a decade, where she directed eight plays for prisoners—resulting in her highly praised book, Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women’s Prison (St. Martins, 2001). Her groundbreaking work is considered the first prison Shakespeare program launched in the U.S. 

She directed adaptations of classic texts behind bars, including Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and The Taming of the Shrew (Rapshrew), Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (set in three centuries). 

 She has written extensively about the criminal legal system in America, including why we should not sentence juveniles to adult prisons in Boy With a Knife: A Story of Murder, Remorse, and a Prisoner’s Fight for Justice (IG, 2016) and Motherlove, short stories about the mothers of teens who’ve killed( Concord Free Press,2024). Sounds like Trouble to Me, her debut prison novel, will be published in May 2026 by Running Wild Publishing. 

Trounstine has spoken throughout the world about women in prison, and co-founded the women’s branch of Changing Lives Through Literature (CLTL), an innovative alternative sentencing program. In 2018, she was invited to Italy and awarded the Gramsci International Award for Theatre in Prison for her 30 years of work in literature and theatre.