A literary writing workshop at the local prison of Salé, aimed at the humanisation of the prison environment and transforming it into a 2nd chance school with an educational and corrective vocation.

The Mohammed VI Foundation for the Reintegration of Detainees and the General Delegation for Prison Administration and Reintegration organised, on Tuesday, a literary writing workshop for the benefit of several inmates of the local prison of Salé who engage in writing short stories, zajal poems in dialectal Arabic and poems in literary Arabic.

The workshop, organised as part of the 2nd edition of the "mama Assia prize", named after the late Assia El Ouadie, associative militant, for poetry and literary writing, aims to humanise the prison environment and transform it into a 2nd chance school with an educational and corrective vocation.

This workshop will be crowned by the distribution of prizes to the winners. A specialised jury will distinguish 9 candidates in each category (3 in the poetry category, 3 in the short story category and 3 in the Zajal category).

In a statement to the press, the principal prison commander in charge of social action, Benaïssa Benacer, indicated that the workshop is the opportunity to allow inmates to acquire notions of creative writing techniques and to innovate in a creative way.

The meeting has the objectives of unearthing future talents among the inmates, notably those who are gifted for the art of the short story, poetry and zajal, he added.

Inside the prison, writing acquires a particular flavour, takes on multiple dimensions, estimated, for his part, the Moroccan writer Mustapha Kliti, president of the local section of the union of writers of Morocco in Kénitra, estimating that prisons welcome true talents and authors engaging in different literary genres.