Appalachian Prison Book Project
Challenging mass incarceration through books, education, and community engagement.
“A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe” — Madeleine L’Engle Most prisons have libraries, so why has APBP mailed over 45,000 books across six Appalachian states: West…
Read More Why Donate to Prison Book Projects When Prisons Have Libraries?
At APBP, there are three main tasks for volunteers: opening letters from people in prison, matching the requests in the letters to a donated book on our shelves, and wrapping books in brown paper to be put in the mail.…
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
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 are excited to announce a new co-sponsor of the APBP Student Organization's Walk for Justice! Underground Printing is helping to create our first-ever t-shirts. Thank you, Underground Printing! https://undergroundshirts.com/…/custom-t-shirt-printing-mor…
As the semester draws to a close, I wanted to share some of the many lessons I’ve learned during my time at APBP: One book can change the course of a person’s life. Letter after letter describes the impact of…
WVU Junior Emma Harrison has been named a Truman Scholar! Emma was a student in Katy Ryan's WVU Inside-Out class (Justice and Literature) in the fall of 2017. She is dedicated to higher education in prison and will be doing an…
On Sept. 22, 2017, APBP sorted through the letters we have received over the past decade! This is step-one in our plan to create a digital archives.
We received this beautiful card at APBP in August 2017: "I also want to thank personally Corina for finding the transgender workbook I received. It was super helpful and several of my friends have found it educational as well."
