Jonathan Rajewski and Kyle Daniel-Bey are artists, writers, and activists working with people impacted by the justice system. Rajewski, an artist, activist, and co-founder of the Hamtramck Free School, a rhizomatic, alternative educational program working inside and outside of prisons, and Daniel-Bey, a poet, artist, activist, co-organizer of the Hamtramck Free School, and formerly incarcerated juvenile lifer, first met in a writing workshop in 2013 behind bars. Since then–and continuing after Daniel-Bey’s return home after 25 years of incarceration–they have organized numerous exhibitions, poetry readings, public discussions, and publications. In 2020, they collaborated with Stefano Harney and Fred Moten in organizing a reading of James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time remotely across eight correctional facilities during the pandemic, when educational programming inside was entirely shutdown. In 2021, they published How to Start a Writing Workshop (Free School Press), a manual co-constructed with incarcerated poets, artists and activists throughout the U.S. in response to the precarity of educational programming inside prisons and with the aim of supporting the emergence of autonomous creative writing communities without permission and without state approval. Recent collaborations involve organizing Daniel-Bey’s forthcoming collection of poetry, Infernal Speech, Divine Thoughts (Free School Press) and Entry Points.

Jonathan Rajewski received the Creative Capital Award in 2024. Jonathan Rajewski (b. 1986, Bismarck, ND) is an artist, writer and activist. In 2013, Rajewski co-founded the Hamtramck Free School, an alternative, rhizomatic educational organization that facilitates creative writing and visual art workshops in Michigan prisons, working closely with juveniles who were sentenced to mandatory life without parole, a sentence that is now unconstitutional. In 2021, Rajewski published How to Start a Writing Workshop (Free School Press), a manual co-constructed with incarcerated poets, artists and activists throughout the United States in response to the precarity of educational programming inside prisons and with the aim of supporting the emergence of autonomous creative writing workshops without permission and without state approval. In 2022, his essay on liberatory pedagogical practices, within and without the studio and classroom, was published in Wreck After Wreck: 5 Years of Critical Practice at Yale School of Art, 2016–2020 (Yale University). He is a 2015 Kresge Fellow in Visual Art and a 2021 Critical Practice Research Grantee from the Yale School of Art. He has exhibited at Nina Johnson Gallery, Miami, Fl; Marlborough Gallery, New York, NY; Jack Hanley Gallery, New York, NY; Reyes Finn, Detroit, MI; and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, among others. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Yale Review, Three Fold Press, Mousse Magazine, The Exhibitionist (MIT Press), and Essay’d (Wayne State University Press). From 2021–2023 he taught at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan. Since 2020, Rajewski has been the Arts Editor for Three Fold Press, an independent quarterly based in Detroit that presents exploratory points of view on arts, culture and society. Rajewski received a BA in Philosophy from Michigan State University and an MFA in Painting & Printmaking from Yale University. He lives in Detroit, Michigan.

Kyle Daniel-Bey received the Creative Capital Award in 2024. Kyle Daniel-Bey (b. 1976, Detroit, MI) is a writer, artist, co-organizer of the Hamtramck Free School and a former member of the Writer’s Block at the Macomb Regional Correctional Facility. His work has appeared in Turning Teaching Inside Out: A Pedagogy of Transformation for Community-Based Education (2013), The Washington Square Review at New York University, University of Michigan Press, among others. In 2021, Daniel-Bey, together with Jonathan Rajewski, published How to Start a Writing Workshop (Free School Press), a manual co-constructed with incarcerated poets, artists and activists throughout the United States in response to the precarity of educational programming inside prisons and with the aim of supporting the emergence of autonomous creative writing workshops without permission and without state approval. He has exhibited at the Detroit Institute of Arts, the College for Creative Studies, and the University of Michigan, among others. He has been a guest lecturer at the Yale School of Art, the University of Michigan and Wayne State University. He lives and works in Detroit, Michigan.