Biography
Adam Roberts (he/they) is a memoirist, essayist, and comics writer from Long Island, New York. Writing across genres, Roberts explores incarceration, survival, identity, and the possibilities of transformation within a system designed to foreclose them. He spent twenty-six years incarcerated in New York State, an experience that became both the subject and the engine of his literary practice.
Roberts is the author of Concrete Carnival, published under the pen name Danner Darcleight, and his writing has appeared in the Marshall Project’s Life Inside, Hyperallergic, and the Vera Institute of Justice’s News & Stories. His work has been recognized with a Pushcart Prize nomination and by PEN America’s Prison Writing Awards. He is currently at work on The Squeeze Machine, a nonfiction account of his fifteen years as a peer counselor in DOCCS custody.
A founding member of the Attica Writers Workshop and an American Prison Writing Archive fellow, Roberts maintains deep ties across universities, reentry organizations, and the nonprofit world. Through Another Party Creative Consultancy, he serves artists and advocates who are working on the margins. Released from prison on October 9, 2025, Roberts is still finding his way.
