This scholarship is a funded award given annually to American University students or alumni or who use creative work or original scholarship to educate the public on pressing issues affecting the criminal justice system and the larger society. Funds for the award are generously provided by the Hassine family.
VICTOR HASSINE
The Victor Hassine Memorial Scholarship is given annually to one or more American University students or alumni who use creative work – literary and visual art, or some combination thereof – to educate the public on the pressing issues affecting the criminal justice system and the greater society. This award honors the memory of Victor Hassine, who tragically took his life after 27 long years of confinement in Pennsylvania prisons. During those years, Victor used his creative talent to produce a host of writings on crime and punishment, both fiction and non-fiction. Victor believed that much of the injustice in the world, especially as seen in our prisons, stemmed from ignorance. He wrote to dispel that ignorance, to educate and inform, and to move others to action.Victor Hassine’s legacy lives on in his writings, most particularly his classic work of social science, Life Without Parole: Living and Dying in Prison Today, published by Oxford University Press. We hope this award will encourage a new generation of young men and women to use their talents in service of a more just and humane future. Each award is accompanied by a $500 stipend provided by the Hassine family.
Recipients
josh hall
2023
Josh Hall is a second-year graduate student pursuing a Data Science MS with a specialization in Applied Public Affairs at American University. They graduated summa cum laude from AU in 2022 with a BA in Justice & Law and are seeking innovative ways to use data science to tell stories and promote criminal justice reform. They are currently the research coordinator for a project with American University Professor Robert Johnson using data mining and sentiment analysis to examine blogs from incarcerated writers to determine how they process their confinement. They will be working as a research assistant for The Lab @ DC for the final year of their degree.
The Victor Hassine Memorial Scholarship is a funded award given annually to American University students or alumni who use creative work or original scholarship to educate the public on pressing issues affecting the criminal justice system and the larger society. Funds for the award are generously provided by the Hassine Family.
George t. Wilkerson
2022
George T. Wilkerson is an award-winning poet, writer, and artist on North Carolina’s Death Row. His poetry has appeared in Poetry, Bayou Magazine, Prime Number Magazine, and elsewhere. His essays and stories have appeared in Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row, The Marshall Project, the PEN anthology The Named and the Nameless, the anthology Right Here, Right Now, and elsewhere.
He has won three PEN awards, has edited the anthology You’ll Be Smarter than Us, and is editor of Compassion, a newsletter by and for Death Row prisoners in America. His poetry collection Interface, published by BleakHouse Publishing, won the 2022 Victor Hassine Memorial Scholarship and was a finalist in the 2018 Cathy Smith Bowers Chapbook Contest and the 2019 Press 53 Poetry Book Contest. His collaborative, hybrid collection Bone Orchard, also from BleakHouse Publishing, examines the differences between doing time with a release date and having a death sentence. To read George’s writing, visit katbodrie.com/georgewilkerson.
Tessie Castillo
2021
Tessie Castillo is an author, journalist and public speaker who specializes in stories on prison reform, drug policy, restorative justice, and racial equity. She is the editor of Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row, an original anthology of writings about the death penalty that features entries by Castillo as well as several current residents of North Carolina’s Death Row.
In 2021 Crimson Letters was a finalist for the 2021 Eric Hoffer award for excellence in small press publishing and Castillo received the Victor Hassine Memorial Scholarship at American University for using creative work to educate the public on criminal justice issues. Tessie Castillo lives in Durham, North Carolina with her daughter. To see more of her writings or to request a speaking engagement with her and her co-authors, visit www.tessiecastillo.com.
Esther Matthews
2019
This year’s recipient is Esther Matthews, a doctoral student in the Department of Justice, Law and Criminology at American University. Her research focuses on punishment, incarceration, and reentry. She is a passionate advocate for reform in all areas of the criminal justice system and a supporter of the arts as a vehicle for public education about crime and punishment. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Political Science from Oregon State University. She also holds a Master of Science in Justice Law and Criminology from American University. She should finish her doctoral studies in the near future.
As befits a Hassine Scholar, Esther is well aware of the remarkable art created by people who reside in carceral settings. During her research inside prisons, she is frequently amazed at the talent and creative work of people who live within the walls, including the sort of plays once written by Victor (and still staged in my classes on occasion). Recently, she observed an individual who lives in prison make a gift of his art to a speaker visiting the prison. Esther rightly considers it an honor to be privy to these remarkable but often hidden accomplishments of people who are incarcerated.
Jacqueline Lantsman
2018
Jacqueline Lantsman is a Bachelors student studying Public Health at American University, projected to graduate in May 2019. She is dedicated to promoting intersectionality in health promotion, ranging from education as a method of prevention, and mental health amongst inmates in the United States Corrections System. She is pursuing a BA in Public Health and minoring in Education and Justice/Law. She is currently working with the Brookings Institution as an Education Policy Intern; conducting research with the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice, based in Harvard Law School; is the Executive Programming Assistant with the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty; and is conducting research on Death Row Inmate Mental Health.
In 2018 she organized the BleakHouse Annual Awards Ceremony. Alongside celebrating the writing of published BleakHouse writers, Jacqueline involved D.C. community activists and stakeholders, inviting grassroots organizers, local educators and filmmakers to present how their work informs the evolving justice narrative.
EMILY DALGO
2016
Emily Dalgo is a senior honors student at American University pursuing a degree in international studies with a focus in justice, ethics, and human rights. Dalgo is the Chief Development Officer of BleakHouse Publishing, and was an Associate Editor for the 2015 BleakHouse Review, an online fine arts magazine published by BleakHouse Publishing. Her first collection of poetry, Silent, We Sit, will be published by the BleakHouse Publishing in Fall 2016. Named after Emily Dickinson, Dalgo was exposed to and fascinated with poetry at a very early age. She believes that writing poetry is a solitary action that has a communal outcome. The emotion in poetry is universal; sharing one’s pain or happiness through a poem can move even the most distant stranger, and connects the reader to the writer instantly. Poetry has a healing property for the poet and the audience, because it builds community and thereby proves false the popular notion that we are alone. Dalgo is committed to writing about social justice issues because people are often desensitized to the suffering going on around them. Poetry causes us to slow down, digest what is being said, and connect to other fellow human beings in a caring way. In the future, Dalgo hopes to continue writing and educating about the injustices of prisons, and hopes to continue reminding those who read her work that our mortality and humanity are all that any of us have that is truly real. This award is accompanied by a $500 stipend courtesy of the Hassine family.
