The twelve stories in Teach the Free Man mark the impressive debut of Peter Nathaniel Malae. The subject of incarceration thematically links the stories, yet their range extends beyond the prison’s barbed wire and iron bars. Avoiding sensationalism, Malae exposes the heart and soul in those dark, seemingly inaccessible corridors of the human experience.

The stories, often raw and startlingly honest, are distinguished by the colloquial voices of California’s prison inmates, who, despite their physical and cultural isolation, confront dilemmas with which we can all identify: the choice to show courage against peer pressure; the search for individual rights within a bureaucracy; and the desperate desire for honor in the face of great sacrifice. These stories present polished and poetic examples of finding something redemptive in the least among us.

The book’s epigraph by W. H. Auden, from which the book takes its title, exemplifies the spirit of these dynamic stories:
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start.
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

Peter Nathaniel Malae lives in Santa Clara, CA, where he is a 2007-08 Steinbeck Fellow at San José State University. His fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in Cimarron Review, Missouri Review, ZYZZYVA, and a host of other magazines and journals across the nation. His work has been selected for distinguished recognition in the Best American Essays and Best American Mysteries series. The manuscript of his first novel was recently awarded the Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Award by the San Francisco Foundation as well as a Silicon Valley Arts Council Fellowship.