114 posts in ‘incarcerated and formerly incarcerated authors’
The law has constructed a regime in which incarcerated journalists like myself are silenced, punished, and disappeared for telling the truth about what happens behind these walls.
Learning Buddhist meditation and yoga while incarcerated can help people cope with the stresses of prison, prepare them for reentry, and strengthen their abolitionist resolve.
Prison writing has often been the spark that lights the flame of political awareness among the incarcerated population and their outside allies.
Solitary confinement steals bites from the mind, heart, and soul every day, without you even realizing it. Eventually these stolen bites equal a whole piece of you gone.
For National Poetry Month 2026, new work from incarcerated authors Andrew Daniels, Steven Harrison, and Curtis Dickson.
“No longer will I travel A road that has no end . . .
I’m up all night looking out of the window. Staring at the moon.
“Unexplainable events of joy just blooms . . .”
Beauty Behind Bars exhibits artwork by incarcerated people from the Washington, D.C., area in community spaces. Here, the project’s leaders discuss the power of art in advocacy work.
“Five/Fourths” & “When Bars as These Won’t Read”
“Whisperings from Old Pompeii” & “God(s) Particle(s)”
“in the summer rain fences disappear . . .”
This isn’t my first strip search during my incarceration. This, however, is the first time it’s being filmed.
Colorado’s ADX is designed to hold people under conditions of the most extreme deprivation. Despite this, the men imprisoned there continue to fight for their rights and freedom.
‘The Alabama Solution’ was nominated for an Academy Award. Meanwhile, its incarcerated filmmakers are in lockdown because there’s no legal protections for imprisoned whistleblowers.
Incarcerated journalist Christopher Blackwell discusses his recent book on solitary confinement, and what it would take to level the playing field for incarcerated writers.
An obscure policy claimed to reward me for doing the work of rehabilitation—by sending me back to a high-security prison.
People ask me now, three years since my release, what freedom feels like. It feels like the protests in Minneapolis.
Neither of us imagined that love and prison were compatible until we met. Now the state is weaponizing our marriage.
As an incarcerated mother, I have fought to remain in my children’s lives. I’ve done everything I could—and it still wasn’t enough.
The nation’s best-known prison journalist discusses his book ‘The Tragedy of True Crime’ and the challenges faced by those who write from inside.
More than half of states do not automatically restore voting rights upon release from prison. A short film contributes to the effort underway in Georgia to end this anti-democratic practice.
When I was falsely accused of abuse, North Carolina took away my sons. The charges were dropped but I still may never see them again.
A former editor-in-chief of a prison newspaper examines the responsibility of prison journalists, the constraints they work under, and why reporting from inside matters.
I aged into adulthood under the violent custody of New York’s Downstate prison. My journey to manhood has required me to prove I’m neither a monster nor a statistic.
How reality TV turns incarceration into entertainment—and helps strengthen the very systems of violence it claims to expose.
In Texas, when someone makes parole, they will only be released once they have an approved home. Many of us have nowhere to go, and no one to help us…
Inside Sing Sing, I turned my twenty-five-year sentence into music fit for one of the world’s greatest stages.
In prison, a cancer diagnosis might as well be a death sentence.
A new initiative on prison journalism from the Institute to End Mass Incarceration aims to restore prison transparency and First Amendment rights for incarcerated journalists.