About

William Eric Waters | William E. Waters | Easy Waters

William Eric Waters is an award-winning poet, fiction writer, essayist, educator, criminal-justice scholar, and nonprofit executive whose work spans literature, criminal justice, reentry, public policy, education, and human services.

He publishes much of his poetry and some scholarship as William E. Waters. His fiction and some earlier prison writing appear under the pen name Easy Waters. He has also published criminal-justice research as Eric Waters.

Across his creative writing, scholarship, teaching, and professional work, Waters returns to a related set of questions: How do institutions exercise power over individual lives? How do race and history shape American systems of justice? What does punishment do to people, families, and communities? And can accountability coexist with rehabilitation, redemption, and second chances?

For more than three decades, Waters’s professional and intellectual work has intersected with criminal justice, reentry, workforce development, education, human services, and public policy. He currently serves as Senior Director of Jail-Based and Youth Programs at Fedcap/Wildcat and has held leadership positions in nonprofit and criminal-justice organizations, including the Osborne Association.

Across poetry, fiction, research, teaching, and criminal-justice practice, Waters has developed a body of work concerned with institutional power, racial justice, punishment, transformation, human dignity, and the possibility of change.

Books and Literary Work

Waters’s literary work encompasses an epic poem, three poetry collections, a novel, a short-story collection, essays, and anthology contributions.

Explore the complete Books section.

Poetry — William E. Waters

Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass: Remembrance of Things Past and Present is an epic poem examining Black history and the experience of Black people in America through slavery and its aftermath. It was a co-winner of the 1998 Edwin Mellen Poetry Prize and was originally published by Edwin Mellen Poetry Press before later being reissued.

Sometimes Blue Knights Wear Black Hats is a poetry collection examining law-enforcement excesses, with many poems inspired by actual cases. An earlier version of the manuscript was a finalist in the 2000 National Poetry Series competition.

The Black Feminine Mystique explores Black womanhood across history, culture, mythology, family, struggle, achievement, beauty, and identity. The manuscript was a Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award finalist.

The Black Blood of Poetry extends Waters’s engagement with Black history, cultural memory, identity, injustice, survival, resilience, and Black literary tradition.

Together, these works place individual experience within the larger currents of Black history and American institutional life.

Fiction — Easy Waters

Streets of Rage is a coming-of-age novel exploring race, family, community, violence, friendship, and young Black life against the social landscape of Brooklyn.

Conundrums: Stories of Law & Justice is a short-story collection examining law, imprisonment, institutional power, moral ambiguity, accountability, memory, redemption, and resilience.

Conundrums extends questions that have occupied Waters throughout his professional and literary life: What is justice? How much punishment is enough? Who gets to define redemption? What happens when legal institutions reduce complicated lives to crimes, sentences, and records?

Scholarship, Criminal Justice, and Public Policy

Waters’s scholarship addresses criminal justice, punishment, parole, reentry, rehabilitation, participatory research, lived expertise, advocacy, and public policy. His work reflects a longstanding interest in bringing the knowledge of people directly affected by the criminal legal system into research and discussions of policy and reform.

Explore the complete Scholarship & Essays section for selected research, published scholarship, criminal-justice writing, literary criticism, advocacy, and cultural commentary.

His participatory criminal-justice research includes “The ‘Hits’ Keep Coming: Examining Parole Practices for Violent Offenders in New York State,” published in 2008 as a conference abstract in the International Journal of Psychology special issue containing abstracts from the XXIX International Congress of Psychology.

In 2013, Waters coauthored the peer-reviewed article “How Much Punishment is Enough? Designing Participatory Research on Parole Policies for Persons Convicted of Violent Crimes”, published in the Journal of Social Issues. The research examined parole decision-making, repeated parole denials, long-term incarceration, personal transformation, remorse, social responsibility, recidivism, and public safety.

Waters later continued this work through MDRC’s Council of Lived Experience Advisers, an initiative of MDRC’s Center for Criminal Justice Research.

In 2025, writing as Eric Waters, he coauthored “Incorporating ‘Lived Expertise’ into Research” with Raul Armenta, Kyla Wasserman, and Yolanda Johnson-Peterkin. The MDRC paper examines how people with firsthand knowledge of criminal-legal systems can participate meaningfully in research design, implementation, interpretation, and dissemination.

Together, these works trace a research trajectory from parole practices and long-term incarceration to broader questions about who produces knowledge about the criminal legal system, whose expertise is recognized, and how research can become more responsive to affected people and communities.

Earlier prison writing includes “Chronicling Sing Sing Prison” in Doing Time: 25 Years of Prison Writing and “Upon Completing Twenty Years” in Undoing Time: American Prisoners in Their Own Words, both published as Easy Waters. His work also appears in Corrections 360: A Look at Corrections from All Angles with “You Don’t Look Like a Criminal!”

On Ezwwaters.com, Waters continues this inquiry through essays, literary analysis, commentary, and projects including The Anatomy of Advocacy, Journey Through Crime, Justice & Literature, and The Conundrums Quotation Project.

A 2018 oral-history interview about the PEN Prison Writing Program documents Waters’s development as an incarcerated writer, his PEN awards and later committee service, literary mentorship, prison literature, journalism, and the evolution of ideas connecting race, punishment, and the criminal legal system.

What is punishment intended to accomplish, and what happens when punishment becomes disconnected from proportionality, rehabilitation, human development, redemption, and justice?

Professional Leadership

Waters currently serves as Senior Director of Jail-Based and Youth Programs at Fedcap/Wildcat, where his work includes programs serving justice-involved adults and young people.

His professional career spans more than three decades of work in criminal justice, reentry, workforce development, human services, nonprofit leadership, program development, and public policy. Earlier in his career, he held leadership responsibilities with the Osborne Association.

His professional experience has provided sustained engagement with many of the institutions that recur throughout his scholarship and creative writing: prisons and jails, parole and reentry systems, nonprofit organizations, workforce programs, educational institutions, and government agencies.

For Waters, criminal justice is not simply a subject of study. It is a field of practice, an area of scholarship, a subject of public policy, and a recurring concern of the literary imagination.

Teaching and African American Literature

Waters has taught at the college and graduate level, including Bard College and Union Theological Seminary, as well as in prison education.

At Bard College, his teaching has included African American Literature in the Twentieth Century, examining major writers, literary movements, historical developments, and debates within the Black literary tradition.

At Union Theological Seminary, his graduate teaching has addressed crime, justice, ethics, faith, and criminal-legal reform, connecting punishment and accountability with moral, theological, and public-policy questions.

His teaching and literary criticism engage writers and thinkers including Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and other major figures in African American literary history.

For Waters, literature is not separate from public life. It is a means of examining how societies understand race, freedom, punishment, belonging, morality, memory, power, and justice.

Education

Waters earned a Master of Professional Studies (M.P.S.) from New York Theological Seminary, a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) from the University at Albany, and a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) from the College at New Paltz.

His education, professional experience, teaching, scholarship, lived expertise, and creative writing have developed along interconnected paths.

Selected Books

Poetry — William E. Waters

  • Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass: Remembrance of Things Past and Present — epic poem; co-winner, 1998 Edwin Mellen Poetry Prize
  • Sometimes Blue Knights Wear Black Hats — poetry collection; earlier manuscript a 2000 National Poetry Series finalist
  • The Black Feminine Mystique — poetry collection; Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award finalist
  • The Black Blood of Poetry — poetry collection

Fiction — Easy Waters

  • Streets of Rage — novel
  • Conundrums: Stories of Law & Justice — short-story collection

Selected Scholarship and Published Writing

For an organized guide connecting these publications with related essays and research themes, visit Scholarship & Essays.

Selected Awards and Recognition

  • Edwin Mellen Poetry Prize — co-winner, 1998
  • National Poetry Series — earlier version of Sometimes Blue Knights Wear Black Hats, finalist, 2000
  • Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award — The Black Feminine Mystique, finalist
  • Esther House Prison Ministries Honor — 2008
  • Ralph Bunche Bridge Builder Award, Citizens Against Recidivism, Inc. — 2007
  • Distinguished Service, Vassar College — 2006
  • Dedicated Service as a Board Member, Cultural Renaissance for Economic Revitalization — 2004

One Writer, Several Publishing Names

William Eric Waters, William E. Waters, Eric Waters, and Easy Waters refer to the same writer and scholar.

William Eric Waters is principally associated with his professional, academic, teaching, and public-service work.

William E. Waters is the name under which his poetry has been published and also appears on scholarly work, including his peer-reviewed parole research.

Eric Waters appears as his byline on the 2025 MDRC publication “Incorporating ‘Lived Expertise’ into Research.”

Easy Waters is his literary pen name, used for the novel Streets of Rage, the short-story collection Conundrums: Stories of Law & Justice, and some earlier prison writing.

These are different publishing identities within a single intellectual and creative record spanning poetry, fiction, scholarship, teaching, criminal justice, history, lived expertise, and social commentary.

Ezwwaters.com is the central online archive and continuing home of that work.

Waters is a native of Brooklyn, New York, and lives in Brooklyn.

Authoritative External Sources

Waters’s academic biography and credentials are independently documented by Union Theological Seminary. His scholarly record is independently represented by the Journal of Social Issues, the International Journal of Psychology, and MDRC’s Center for Criminal Justice Research.

These sources, together with his books and anthology contributions, provide independent reference points connecting William Eric Waters, William E. Waters, Eric Waters, and Easy Waters with his literary, scholarly, teaching, and criminal-justice work.

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