Bard Student Robert Lee Williams Published in the New York Times
In an essay for the New York Times series “Finding Beauty,” Bard Prison Initiative student Robert Lee Williams wrote about his bittersweet relationship to trees during his incarceration. When he transferred prisons partway through his sentence, the yard in the new prison contained three walnut trees that reminded him of the house he lived in growing up. “In the prison, their flourishing represented a kind of freedom that seemed out of place,” Williams writes. “In confinement, we are surrounded by synthetic materials… These glorious trees [were] elegant and thriving in this place of concrete and hard metal.”
Williams is a journalist whose work has appeared in Literary Hub and Slate. He is a full-time Bard student at Eastern Correctional Facility.
Post Date: 09-02-2025
Williams is a journalist whose work has appeared in Literary Hub and Slate. He is a full-time Bard student at Eastern Correctional Facility.
Post Date: 09-02-2025