Appalachian Prison Book Project
Challenging mass incarceration through books, education, and community engagement.
Prisons aren’t prepared for pandemics like COVID-19. For Steven, incarcerated in Pennsylvania, such an inadequate response means he is helping other incarcerated men write compassionate release papers. The other thing to know about Steven is this: Early in the pandemic,…
Read More “People Will Die:” What It’s Like to Be in Prison During the Coronavirus Pandemic
In this excerpt from his journal, Magical Charlie wrote about his experience with COVID-19 restrictions in a Pennsylvania prison: March 22, 2020 After they nixed our outside volunteers, our Sunday night Prayer & Share group was kaput. On the 19th…
Read More Religion Behind Bars: Building Community During COVID-19
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…
In The Washington Post’s “Book Club” newsletter, critic Ron Charles wrote about access to books in prisons. He highlighted work by Prison Legal News, PEN America, the Prison Policy Initiative, and APBP. Connecting the Dots What I especially appreciate about…
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?
