Angela Williams - Snakes and Ladders

Former prisoner and drug addict turned university lecturer Angela Williams dissects the Australian prison system from the inside out in Snakes & Ladders, a raw & remarkable memoir that gives voice to the experience of thousands of inmates who'll never have the opportunity to have their stories heard. 

With unwavering courage, intelligence and humour, Snakes and Ladders reveals an astonishing true story of falling through the cracks, and what it takes to climb back out again.   

Angela discusses her book and life journey with Patrick Lenton, editor of Junkee. 

This is a FREE event. Drinks and nibbles provided.  

About the Book

Former prisoner and drug addict turned university lecturer Angela Williams dissects the Australian prison system from the inside out in this raw memoir. Snakes and Ladders gives voice to the experience of thousands of inmates who will never have the opportunity to have their stories heard. 

It’s all here in vivid detail – the drugs available more conveniently than UberEats; the rough characters hardened by tough lives; the abusive security guards on power trips who can’t see the person inside a green jumpsuit; the ‘safety measures’ for at-risk inmates that would push the most stable person to their mental limit. 

It takes a remarkable woman to have the clarity and poise to articulate the myriad ways the system intended for rehabilitation is actually designed for demolition. Angela Williams is that person. 

The Story

It was no surprise that Angela Williams went to jail. A traumatic, violent upbringing saw to that. But after serving a short sentence for theft as a teenager, she worked hard to break the cycle. 

Thirteen years later Angela was studying, teaching, providing a stable home for her son, and finally feeling like she’d got her life together. Then she got hit by a postie bike. Police realised that Angela still had ten months to go on the prison sentence she’d thought was in her distant past. 

However, she was a different prisoner the second time around: no longer a scared, damaged nineteen-year-old, she knew how to speak up for herself and her fellow prisoners against a system of power, privilege and cruelty that controls the lives of Australia’s most vulnerable women and offers little hope for redemption. 

With unwavering courage, intelligence and humour, Snakes and Ladders reveals an astonishing true story of falling through the cracks, and what it takes to climb back out again. 

Praise

"Snakes and Ladders is devastating and brilliant. Williams is a tremendous writer, her insight into power and punishment is brave, honest and revealing."  - Anna Krien    

About the Author

Angela Williams is a high-school drop out with degrees in Media and Communications and Creative Writing and a PhD in Creative Arts. She describes herself as having lived too many lives for one body. Across the years, she has worked as an academic, waiter, manager, salesperson, sex worker, glassie, health education officer, dominatrix, and very unsuccessful criminal. Born into a family rife with addiction, personality disorders, cyclic child abuse and mental illnesses, Angela escaped into words as a child, fantasy as an adolescent, heroin as a young adult, and came back to words when she found education.

Weighed down as she was by her history, Angela always refused to be a silent victim. Her first-hand insights have appeared in several different publications, including speaking as ‘Jennifer’ in an article about mental health in NSW prisons by Inga Ting which was a finalist for the 2011 Human Rights Media Award.