Short Bio — For Media & Publication Use
Jean Trounstine is an author, activist, and professor who directed the first Shakespeare play in prison, world-wide, at Framingham Women’s Prison in Massachusetts. For ten years she directed eight plays and wrote about that work in the well-received Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women’s Prison (St. Martin’s, 2001). Almost 30 years ago, she co-founded the women’s branch of Changing Lives through Literature in Massachusetts — a democratic book group with judges, probation officers, professors and those on probation.
She wrote Boy With A Knife: A Story of Murder, Remorse, and a Prisoner’s Fight for Justice (IG Publishing, 2016) about why children should not be sentenced to adult prisons. Her work has been featured on National Public Radio, The Today Show, and internationally. She received a Gramsci Award in Italy for her many years of justice work in prisons in 2018. Motherlove (2024), a book of short stories about the mothers of teens who have killed other teens, was published by Concord Free Press.
Sounds Like Trouble to Me, Trounstine’s debut novel, will be released May 12, 2026 by Running Wild Press.
Downloadable photos by Richard Pasley — right-click to save
Full Biography
Jean Trounstine is an author, activist, and professor emerita at Middlesex Community College in Lowell, Massachusetts. Her debut novel Sounds Like Trouble to Me will be released May 12, 2026 by Running Wild Press.
Trounstine worked at Framingham Women’s Prison for ten years where she directed eight plays with prisoners. Her highly-praised book about that work, Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women’s Prison, has been featured on NPR, The Connection, Here and Now, and in numerous print publications here and abroad. In addition, she has spoken around the world on women in prison, co-founded the women’s branch of Changing Lives Through Literature — an award-winning alternative sentencing program featured in The New York Times and on The Today Show — and co-authored two books about the program.
She published a book of poetry, Almost Home Free, and co-edited the New England best-seller, Why I’m Still Married: Women Write Their Hearts Out On Love, Loss, Sex, and Who Does the Dishes. Her most recent work of non-fiction is Boy With A Knife: A Story of Murder, Remorse, and a Prisoner’s Fight for Justice (IG Publishing, 2016), which explores the true story of Karter Kane Reed and the injustice of sentencing juveniles to adult prisons. Her 7th book and first short story collection, Motherlove, published by Concord Free Press, explores the stories of ten mothers, each struggling with the aftermath of murder.
Trounstine is on the steering committee of the Coalition for Effective Public Safety in Massachusetts. She takes apart the criminal justice system brick by brick for magazines and blogs such as DigBoston, Commonwealth Magazine, Boston Magazine, Truthout.org, and Huffington Post.
In 2018, she was invited to Italy and awarded the Gramsci International Award for Theatre in Prison for her work in literature and theatre for the past 30 years.
Jean in Her Own Words
“Today, more than twenty years after Karter Kane Reed killed a boy in a tragic high school stabbing, we know it is dead wrong to treat kids as if they were little adults, no matter what the crime. Yet many of the same policies that impacted Karter, continue to impact young people nationwide.”
From Boy With A Knife: A Story of Murder, Remorse, and a Prisoner’s Fight for Justice
“When people ask me what inspired me to teach in a prison, I tell them what kept me going was not simply my love for literature and theatre. While it is true that prison is a repressive environment, the one who offers hope in the classroom has the potential to effect change. For many of the women I encountered, education offered hope; and drama, freedom… I felt a chemistry, a link between their lives and mine.”
From Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women’s Prison
“The world I want to live in does not lock up women and throw away the key. It does not make laws based on ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ It is a world where prisoners can transform their lives through the beauty of the written word, through the music of a line of poetry, and through an idea that soars through prison bars and lives forever.”
From Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women’s Prison
“What makes many of us stay married might be called another kind of longing. A longing for what’s irreversible, for what we find while looking for the Holy Grail, some quest for the everlasting. Maybe the deepest satisfactions pull on us like anchors, grounding us whenever we feel the urge to slip away like ships at sea.”
From “The Finish Line,” Why I’m Still Married
“Whenever settlers come to a new land, they find a place to bury their dead. In Cincinnati, the dead are scattered around the city, in landscaped acres of trees and streams. Christians lie with Christians, and Jews, with Jews. But separation in the Jewish community cuts deeper…”
From “The Memory We Call Home,” Travelers Tales