Appalachian Prison Book Project
Challenging mass incarceration through books, education, and community engagement.
In response to the coronavirus pandemic, the Appalachian Prison Book Project is temporarily closing its doors. Closed Until Further Notice APBP’s office is located in the Aull Center, which is owned and managed by the Morgantown Public Library. When they…
Read More APBP Suspending Volunteer Operations During Coronavirus Pandemic
On January 23, 2020, Dwayne Betts announced that his memoir A Question of Freedom, which chronicles Betts’s time as a young man in prison and how reading saved his life, was officially banned from Virginia state prisons. Last semester, I…
My first day as a teaching assistant for an Inside-Out class was the first day I walked inside a prison. I had no idea what to expect and did not know what questions to ask. When we arrived at the…
The first rule of Book Club: You must talk about Book Club. Derivatively inverse of Fight Club’s mantra, I believe this philosophy best sums up one of the key aspects of serving as a volunteer at a prison. While many…
For the past six weeks, APBP volunteers have been working to understand the terms and implications of a contract signed by the WV Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (WVDCR) with the private telecom company Global Tel Link (GTL). Our concern…
I teach literature inside prisons. My students are serious, observant, and purposeful readers. They light up with books. When one looked at the cover of Dwayne Betts’ memoir A Question of Freedom, he said, "I can't wait to show the…
"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…
Read More How Much Does It Cost to Read a Free Book on a Free Tablet?
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…
Read More The Prison Book Club Syllabus: Learning, Listening, Inspiring
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…
Read More Prison Reform: Growth and Autonomy Through Education