Ken Klonsky's Critical Reads
Ken Klonsky grew up in the Bronx, New York, and on Long Island (Long Beach and mostly Rockville Centre). He and his wife, Mary Ellen Belfiore, moved to Canada in the late 1960’s and, for twenty-seven years, Ken taught high-school in Toronto, mainly in special education classes. In 1983, he co-authored a play, Taking Steam, that was performed in New York (Jewish Repertory Theater) and Toronto. In 1992, a book of short stories, Songs of Aging Children, was published by Arsenal Pulp Press in Vancouver. In 2011, he co-authored the spiritual autobiography of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, Eye of the Hurricane. After joining Carter (wrongly convicted of murder in 1966) at Innocence International, reversing wrongful convictions has become a central mission in Ken’s life. “I got in touch with [Rubin] Carter after seeing the film The Hurricane, and we began working together in 2001.” Carter had moved to Toronto in 1988, where he helped to found the Association in Defense of the Wrongly Convicted. He left in 2004 to found Innocence International. After Carter’s death, in 2014, Ken became director of Innocence International, participating in the freeing of David McCallum in October of that year. Ken used what he has learned in the Innocence project to write his novella, Life Without, published in 2011 by Quattro Books, and also his recent play with the same title. Life Without deals with a New York cabdriver who is wrongfully accused of murder and caught in a matrix of venality by corrupt cops, whining relatives, and an incompetent lawyer. He just completed an account of the McCallum case: Freeing David McCallum: The Last Miracle of Rubin Carter. Ken Klonsky and David McCallum discuss Freeing David McCallum: The Last Miracle of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter on Thursday, October 26, 6pm at 57th Street Books. They will be joined in conversation by Steve Drizin.
Everything and anything by James Baldwin
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
Black Like Me, by Richard Wright
True Stories of False Confessions, by Steve Drizin and Rob Warden (Northwestern University Press)
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander
Soul on Ice, by Eldridge Cleaver
Native Son, by Richard Wright
About Freeing David McCallum: In April 2014, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter died after a long battle with cancer. David McCallum was exonerated and freed two months later, after serving 29 years in prison. This is the story of how Carter and his friend and coauthor Ken Klonsky worked for ten years to help free the wrongfully convicted McCallum. It details their struggles--from founding an innocence project, to finding lawyers willing to work pro bono, to hiring a private detective to sift through old evidence and locate original witnesses, and the most difficult part, convincing members of a deeply flawed criminal justice system to reopen a case that would expose their own mistakes. It eventually took a new district attorney, a documentary film, and a New York Daily News op-ed written by Carter on his death bed to secure justice. Freeing David McCallum tells a tale of frustration, agony, and undying hope, and the miracle that resulted in David's release.
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