David Matlin is a novelist, poet, and essayist. His collections of poetry and prose include the books CHINA BEACH, DRESSED IN PROTECTIVE FASHION, and A HALFMAN DREAMER. His first novel, How the Night is Divided, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1993. His most recent book, Prisons: Inside the New America from Vernooykill Creek to Abu Ghraib, published by North Atlantic Books, is based on a ten-year experience teaching in one of the oldest Prison Education Programs in the nation in New York State. This extended essay is a discussion of the crisis of prisons, the invention of surplus populations, and how, in making prison our largest growth industry, we are mining our own civil disintegrations at unprecedented levels. David Matlin is an associate professor at San Diego State University and teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program.
