Appalachian Prison Book Project
Challenging mass incarceration through books, education, and community engagement.
"War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength." So goes the official slogan of George Orwell’s Oceania, a hyper-surveillance-based police state underpinned by the illogic of doublethink. Defined in 1984 as “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in…
The men’s book club at Hazelton is about to have its third meeting, and already, the group has had such an impact on us. A Promising Start Everyone was nervous on our first day—no matter how many book clubs we…
Join the Appalachian Prison Book Project and PEN America during Banned Books Week 2019 to learn more about censorship and banned books in prison. A Rise in Prison Censorship Departments of Corrections (DOCs) often claim that book bans and book…
Prison reform has a long and complicated history. Reform is often defined as how people come out of prison “changed” and with a sense of autonomy (or even freedom), while others remain the same as before they went in. Prison…
APBP has been awarded the 2019 Amplifier Award from Barrelhouse Magazine. We are so excited about this partnership that will help us promote writing and artwork by incarcerated people in West Virginia. Special thanks to APBP Student President Rayna Momen who took…
APBP intern Kristin, a student at WVU, and Maruice, an incarcerated artist, worked together to create a drawing that represents many of our organization's core values. A book, to represent education; a key, to represent freedom; mountains, to represent Appalachia;…
We mailed more books to imprisoned people in 2018 than in any previous year -- more than 5,000. Here are the numbers as of October. Thanks to everyone who makes this work possible. We are excited to grow as a…
From Katie Kennel I volunteered with the Appalachian Prison Book Project on November 3rd and returned on November 6th. When I arrived there to volunteer, I received a brief training and was then allowed to work. There are three categories…