Dear Friends: Pops the Club Anthology

by Amy Friedman

Kat Secaida, wearing white Converse sneakers, wanders through her hood, collecting "the stories of the Culver City projects." Julian Izaguirre recalls the drama at school that starts "when you don't want it to." The young artists and poets in Dear Friends , the eighth anthology from POPS the Club--a nonprofit serving youth impacted by the Pain of the Prison System--forged their work largely during the pandemic and in isolation. Though they were separated by screens from friends, teachers, counselors, and peers, their work still brims with hope and curiosity. It is searing, straightforward, sensitive, and sometimes startling in its wisdom and honesty. "I'm not someone who's always right," Mikey Estrada writes, "but I always try to be. A kid who likes to read and learn . . . a kid who grew up in violence and in gangs . . . where others were waiting for me to fail." Instead, this volume speaks of their success and of all they have to teach us.

232 pages, Paperback

Published April 12, 2022

About the author

My most recent books are Desperado's Wife: A Memoir (as soon on Katie Couric on July 9, 2013) and the soon-to-be-released story of Anne Willan's life, the memoir One Souffle at a Time, with Anne Willan (St. Martin's Press, September 2013).

I've been writing for as long as I can remember, inspired first by trying to give voice to those who are voiceless. This has been the unconscious impetus behind all three of my memoirs and much of the fiction and short stories and thousands of essays I've written.

I worked for years as a newspaper columnist in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and I still write (since 1992) the internationally syndicated newspaper feature Tell Me A Story that has spawned two books and three audiobooks.

I now live in Los Angeles and teach memoir and personal essay classes at UCLA Extension, The Skirball Cultural Arts Center, Idyllwild School of the Arts Summer Program, and PEN USA's Pen in the Classroom program.