From WVU’s Eberly Magazine: “A clarifying moment in Mike Buso’s life was in downtown Morgantown in the headquarters of a nonprofit while opening a misaddressed letter.
“The letter was to the Appalachian Prison Book Project, founded and directed by WVU English faculty, from an inmate.
“He misspelled three of the four words in our name: he misspelled Appalachian, he misspelled book and project,” Buso said. “The only thing he spelled right was prison. He had the wrong ZIP code and he had the wrong P.O. box number and yet somehow the letter still got to us.”
“The request was simple. While many of the people writing requests to the project ask for specific book titles or genres and offer up commentary, this man simply wanted books.
“There’s something about that basic earnest request for knowledge,” Buso said. “That to me is why I want to be a teacher, a professor. It’s why I’m here and APBP’s mission is one that I can get behind so easily.” Read more