Twenty-four prisoners, most serving life with little hope of freedom, faced off with a dozen college students on a maximum-security prison yard as part of a unique creative writing experiment. The ostensible purpose was to teach them to write, but the lessons went much deeper.
Over 16 weeks, prisoners--originally wary and skeptical of outsiders--learned to express themselves openly and honestly, many for the first time in their lives, in a setting where survival often demands the opposite. They were asked to abandon the pretense and bravado that had kept them alive, as they struggled to better understand themselves--and each other. 
And the college students--at first apprehensive, even hateful--were astonished to discover that the men inside were not the cold-blooded monsters they had expected to meet. Through what became an intimate collaboration, students helped these men to explore and to share deeply personal issues, suppressed emotions, and lifelong insecurities.
Through it all, both groups found humanity and hope in a place where they had expected neither.