Saturday, January 10, 2009

Radio Interview On Monday Morning

I'm on the Duncan Barkes Show this Monday morning to discuss how the first year of my release has unfolded. I’ll be reading some excerpts from the book I’m shaping up with the help of my mentor, Sally Hinchcliffe, tentatively titled Green Bologna and Pink Boxers: Surviving Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Jail.
The station is City Talk 105.9 out of Liverpool. I expect to be on for approximately 30 to 40 minutes between 9am and 10am in England (between 2am to 3am Arizona time).

Here's the link for anyone who wants to listen to it online: http://www.whatson.com/citytalk/

Here’s a small excerpt from the book:

Entering Joe Arpaio’s Madison Street Jail

In a corridor, guards patted us down, and confiscated our shoelaces.
“Step through there,” a female guard said, pointing at a walk-through metal detector.
On both sides of the corridor, inmates in cells were banging on the Plexiglas and yelling at the guards. Outside of the cells, the guards were yelling names, slamming doors and cursing the inmates.
“Attwood! This way!”
I walked by a Mexican woman in a black restraint chair. Limbs shackled. Chest strapped. The thick string of drool dangling from her chin swung like a pendulum as she wriggled in the tilted-back seat. When a guard hid her head in a hood, she howled like a cat on fire.
“I’m Attwood.”
“Get in there!”
My heart pistoned as I entered a cell containing dozens of prisoners, most of them huddled on the floor in a variety of uncomfortable positions. On each side of the room men were sat upright and shoulder-to-shoulder on steel double bunks – forming shelves of humans. Swastikas and gang graffiti – Aryan Brotherhood, South Side Posse Bloods, Barrio 19th Ave – loomed down from the walls. I gagged on the plague-like fug. “Excuse me,” I said, pushing through the men clustered around the door yelling at the guards. Manoeuvring carefully over the patchwork of limbs and bodies, I found a space with a urinous odour near the toilet. Resting against the filthy back wall, I slid down. I was congratulating myself on finding a place to sit away from the yellers, screamers and Plexiglas bangers, when I noticed insects shaped like almonds darting on the floor. Cockroaches. I flicked one off my shoe and rose fast. I brushed the surrounding ranks of them away with my feet. Watching them scale the ankles of a hobo snoring under the nearest bunk, and disappear into his trousers, I shuddered.

On the show, I'll also be reading a longer excerpt about a suspected childmolester getting smashed and left for dead by skinheads at Towers jail.

Next month, I am moving to London to seek career success. The man who has hired me to speak to audiences of youths is based down there. London is also the centre of literature.

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Shaun P. Attwood

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