Contributors
Anna Clark
journalist, writer, educator, blogger, editor; a bookish outdoorsy sensibility. Her website: www.annaclark.net includes stories on creative social justice as well as other narratives and short stories. She is involved with the Prison Creative Arts Project in Michigan...
Traci Schlesinger
Traci Schlesinger is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at DePaul University. She received her AA in Women Studies from Bergen Community College, her BA in Sociology from Fordham University, and her PhD in Sociology from Princeton University, where she...
Starhawk
Starhawk is a lifelong activist in peace and global justice movements, a leader in the feminist and earth-based spirituality movements, author or coauthor of ten books, including The Spiral Dance, The Fifth Sacred Thing, Webs of Power: Notes from...
Dorothy Roberts
Author, lecturer, speaker and lawyer Dorothy Roberts spoke at the 25th anniversary celebration for Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers (CLAIM).
Michelle Alexander
Michelle Alexander is an associate professor of law at Ohio State University and a civil rights advocate, who has litigated numerous class action discrimination cases and has worked on criminal justice reform issues. She is a recipient of a...
Rachel Galindo
Rachel Galindo is a 25 year old birthmother and artist. She has been incarcerated for nearly seven years and has not allowed prison conditions to stop her from doing the things she loves, such as reading, writing, drawing, running,...
Jerrye Broomhall
Jerrye Broomhall was born in Sapulpa, OK in 1968 and graduated high school there in 1986. She went to the University of OK, but dropped out and moved to SF where she later became addicted to heroin. She supported...
Piper Kerman
Piper Kerman is an American memoirist. In 1998, she was indicted for money laundering and drug trafficking. She pleaded guilty and served 13 months in a minimum security prison located in Danbury, Connecticut
Lisa Newhouse
Lisa Ann Newhouse was born and raised in Dallas, TX. She has three grown boys, all graduated from high school or college. She has three grandchildren. Her birthday is December 10, 1966. She loves to write, cook, and read....
Geneva Brown
Geneva Brown is an Associate Professor of Law at Valparaiso University Law School. She received her B.A. and J.D. degrees from the University of Wisconsin and her M.A. degree from the
Stormy Ogden
Stormy Ogden is a California Indian woman, Kashaya Pomo, and a recognized member of the Tule River Yokuts tribe. She has a B.A. in Native American Studies from Humboldt State University and Certification as a Substance Abuse Counselor through...
Patricia O'brien
Patricia O'Brien has a long history of activism, social work practice, education, and research focusing on women's concerns in Kansas City, Little Rock, AR and in Chicago. As a social worker, she worked as a staff member in three...
Karen Johnson
Karen Johnson I'm a 45 year old mother of 4; including an 8 year old with Autism. Currently, I'm serving a 6 year sentence at Dwight.
Sara Olson
Sara Olson is a Minnesotan in a California prison. She was a fugitive for 24 years, living in various places including the Country of Zimbabwe, Baltimore, MD and Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN Ms. Olson’s family – her husband...
Rachel Roth
Rachel Roth was a 2006 Soros Justice Fellow who writes about how prisons affect women's reproductive rights. She has worked as a professor and as a research fellow at Ibis Reproductive Health, and is the author of the book...
Laurie Schaffner
Laurie Schaffner is the author of Girls in Trouble with the Law, (Rutgers 2006), a qualitative study of court-involved girls. Her other work includes Teenage Runaways: Broken Hearts and "Bad Attitudes" (NY: Haworth Press, 1999), co-editorship of Regulating Sex:...
Karen Shain
Karen Stain is the Administrative Director of San Francisco-based Legal Services for Prisoners with Children.
Silja Talvi
Silja Talvi is a senior editor at In These Times, an investigative journalist and essayist with credits in many dozens of newspapers and magazines nationwide, including The Nation, Salon, Santa Fe Reporter, Utne, and the Christian Science Monitor. She...
Patricia Wright
Patricia Wright is a survivor of martial abuse 17 years after her ex-husband's murder she was arrested and charged with the crime. She is now serving time in Central California Women's Facility State Prison. This is a testimony of...
Angela Davis
Angela Davis is a world-renowned political activist and leader educating various audiences on the prison industrial complex, the criminal justice system, women's issues, issues affecting communities of color, among an array of other subjects. She studied in Europe at...
Mary Field Belenky
Mary Field Belenky, Ed.D. is an educator, researcher, and writer who focuses her work on women's intellectual and ethical development. She studies projects and organizations that enable marginalized and silenced women to gain a voice, claim the powers of...
Salome Chasnoff
Salome Chasnoff is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, installation artist and media activist who has been guiding Beyondmedia’s artistic production since founding it in 1996. Her strong commitment to using media for liberation education and progressive organizing has drawn like-minded...
Marilyn Buck
On Tuesday, August 3, 2010, long-time political prisoner and acclaimed poet and translator Marilyn Buck, 62, passed peacefully at her home in Brooklyn, New York.
A few short weeks earlier, on July 15th, Marilyn had been released from the...
Girl Talk
Girl Talk was a program that worked with young women involved in the juvenile justice system in Cook County from 1993 to 2006.
Health and Medicine Policy Research Group
Health and Medicine Policy Research Group is an independent policy center with a twenty-three year history of evaluating local health policy. For more information, see their website at www.hmprg.org.
Gina Autrey
Gina Autrey was born in a small town in South Carolina. She grew up in a loving home, with her parents and her sister. Throughout her childhood, she was never problematic or in any trouble; she was an honor...
Amy Goodman
Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on over 900 television and radio stations in North America. Time Magazine named Democracy Now! its “Pick of the Podcasts,”...
Gail T. Smith
Gail T. Smith, is the executive director of CLAIM (Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers). She earned her JD at New York University in 1985. She has represented thousands of mothers and their children's caregivers in court, and has...
Life Without
Producer: Melissa Mummert
Youth Directors:
JaQuila - JaQuila is enjoying being reunited with her mom, Linda, following her release from prison. JaQuila is anticipating going to middle school next year. Linda just got a job and...
Judith Greene
Judith Greene is one of the nation’s leading criminal justice policy experts whose essays and articles on criminal sentencing issues, police practices, and correctional policy have been published in numerous books, as well as in national and international journals....
Patricia Allard
Patricia Allard was an Open Society Institute Soros Justice Advocacy Fellow and is a research consultant at Justice Strategies. As an OSI Fellow she developed a ‘research to action’ initiative that resulted in child welfare reform, affecting over one...
Kebby Warner
Kebby Warner is incarcerated in Michigan. After losing custody of her daughter, Helen, she became active in the struggle against the prison-industrial complex and is forming an organization called PACK (People Against Court Kidnapping) to protest incarcerated parents' lack...
Wenona Thompson
Wenona Thompson served two and a half years in Illinois' Juvenile Justice system and went on to become the Coordinator for Girl Talk, a program for girls at Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center. Wenona died on February 23,...
Chesa Boudin
Chesa Boudin has been awarded 2003 Rhodes Scholarships for study at Oxford University. A native of Chicago, Illinois, Boudin majors in history and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. A student of Latin American development, Boudin spent his...
Alexandra Cox
Alexandra Cox is a Doctoral candidate in Criminology at the University of Cambridge. Her research is about young people's experiences of punishment and social control. She previously worked for the Drug Policy Alliance and the Neighborhood Defender Service of...
Donnie Belcher
Donnie Belcher is a senior at DePaul University, majoring in Education. A published poet, Donnie also writes for the DePaula, the school newspaper, and Melanin, a new teen magazine written for and by African American young women. She serves...
Deborah Nicholls
My name is Deborah Nicholls. I am a married 42 year old from Northern Michigan. I have seven brothers and sisters, and a college education. I love all things art and crafts. I have a talent for painting with...
Tammica L. Summers
Tammica L. Summers "I am 34 y.o. (but I look 24!). I'm 4'11", 120 lbs., Petite, Sweet, and Single! I was raised in Florida, but have traveled all over the world. I am a college graduate and was a...
Sonya West
Sonya West was born October 15, 1971. She grew up on Chicago's West Side. She grew up in a family of six and is the baby girl. At the age of 18 she got caught up in a life...
Shanna Lemiux-Taylor
Shanna Lemieux-Taylor is 28 years old, married, and a proud mother of four beautiful children. She enjoys dancing, shopping, all sports activities, and camping. She completed some college courses and is working toward graduation. She grew up in Lewiston,...
Chrissy DeStefano
Chrissy wrote poetry while at the Cumberland County Jail in Portland Maine.
Melissa
I am Melissa. I'm 36 years old with two lovely, intelligent children who are now far away from me. I've made mistakes with drugs but try not to dwell on the past. i learn from my mistakes and take...
Tracy
Tracy, is 34 years old. She is sentenced 15 years and will parole after serving 7 years. She was a victim of domestic violence for 12 years.
Rebecca Seiber
Rebecca Seiber is 41 years old in 2008, and she has been incarcerated since she was 26 years old. She is 5'2", 130 lbs. green eyes brown hair. She is easy to correspond with.
Deanna Lynd
Deanna Lynd is a 31 years old single white female whom is serving a 15 yer minimum mandatory prison sentence in South Florida. She is originally from New Orleans, LA attended Tulanc Medical University there, teachers pre-release classes and...
Heather Johnson
Heather Johnson writes, "I am 31 year old, and I have been writing poetry and short stories since the age of 7. I became a published author last year with my book of poetry called Impressions, so check it...
Dawn Harding
Dawn Harding, is a 32 year old and is sentenced to 14 months for sales of cocaine from Cape Conaveral. She has a 6 year old son and loves reading and writing poetry.
Victoria Law
Victoria Law is a writer, photographer, zinester and mother. In 1996, she helped start Books Through Bars - New York City, a group that sends free books to prisoners nationwide. In 2000, she began concentrating on the needs and...
Linda Michael
Linda Michael is a 56-year-old woman whom has been incarcerated for over two decades at Mabel Bassett Correctional Center in Oklahoma.
Barrilee Bannister
Barrilee Bannister was one of seventy-eight women sent to a male prison in Arizona run by the Corrections Corporation of America, where they were sexually assaulted and harassed by male staff. Barrilee organized the women, contacted the media and...
Diana Block
Diana Block is a member of the planning committee of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners and part of the editorial collective, which produces its newsletter, The Fire Inside. She is also a member of the steering committee of...
Margaret Byrne
Margaret Byrne is an attorney in private practice who represents battered women in clemency petitions and in the defense of criminal cases.
Michelle VanNatta
Michelle VanNatta is currently Director of Criminology at Dominican University, believes in prison abolition and works with CLAIM (Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers).
Tori Marlan
Tori Marlan, has been a feature writer for the Chicago Reader since 1995. She has won two Peter Lisagor Awards for exemplary journalism, an Association of Alternative Newsweekly's award for social reporting, and a Herman Kogan Award for writing...
Laura Whitehorn
Laura Whitehorn, was released from prison in August 1999 after a little more than fourteen years. She lives in New York City with her lover, Susie Day, and is involved in work for the release of political prisoners. She...
Iran Human Rights Documentation Center
The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center is an independent non-profit organization that was founded in 2004 by human rights scholars and lawyers. .IHRDC believes that the development of an accountability movement and a culture of human rights in Iran...
Jordan Flaherty
Jordan Flaherty is a journalist and staffer with the Louisiana Justice Institute. He was the first writer to bring the story of the Jena Six to a national audience, and his award-winning reporting from the Gulf Coast has been...
Joey L. Mogul
Joey L. Mogul is a partner at the People’s Law Office in Chicago and director of the Civil Rights Clinic at DePaul University’s College of Law. She is a co-author of Queer (In)justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the...
Andrea J. Richie
Andrea J. Ritchie is a police misconduct attorney and organizer in New York City. She is a co-author of Queer (In)justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States, along with Joey L. Mogul and Kay Whitlock.
Rachel Lloyd
Rachel Lloyd is the Executive Director and Founder of Girls Educational & Mentoring Services (GEMS), which she founded in 1998 to support American girls and young women survivors of commercial sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking. It is now the...
Ann Russo
Ann Russo, is an antiracist feminist writer, educator, and activist who is currently the Director of the Women's and Gender Studies Program at DePaul University. Her research, teaching, and activism over the past 25 years has been embedded in...
Kari Lyderson
Kari Lyderson, is a reporter in The Washington Post's Midwest Bureau, an instructor in the Urban Youth International Journalism Program serving students who live in public housing and a freelancer for various publications including, In These Times, Clamor Magazine,...
Ayelet Waldman
Ayelet Waldman is the author of Red Hook Road and Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace.
Robin Levi
Robin Levi is the Human Rights director of the Oakland-based nonprofit Justice Now, the first teaching law clinic in the country solely focused on the needs of people in women's prisons.
Dorsey Nunn
Dorsey Nunn is co-founder of All of Us or None and Director of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children.
Kenneth Glasgow
Kenneth Glasgow is the founder and director of The Ordinary People's Society.
Jenni Fagan
Jenni Fagan is a Scottish poet/novelist based in London. Her poetry collection 'Urchin Belle' was released in the UK and New Zealand. Her recent collection 'The Dead Queen of Bohemia' won 3AM Poetry Book of the Year 2010. Jenni...
NAACP
The mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination. Visit naacp.org for more information.
Solitary Watch
Solitary Watch is an innovative public website aimed at bringing the widespread use of solitary confinement and other forms of torture in U.S. prisons out of the shadows and into the light of the public square. A unique collaboration...
Rachel Williams
Rachel Williams is an Assistant Professor of Art Education at the University of Iowa. She is the editing author of Teaching the Arts in Prison, published by Northeastern University Press in 2003. Currently she is conducting a two-year narrative...
Pamela Thomas
Pamela Thomas is the Client Services Manager for the North Lawndale Employment Network's ex-offender program, where she supervises case managers and develops community resources for clients. Along with surviving the streets as a child, she also battled a very...
Ann Folwell Stanford
Ann Folwell Stanford is professor of multidisciplinary and literary studies at the School for New Learning, DePaul University. She is also the founder and director of the DePaul Women, Writing and Incarceration Project.
Andrea Smith
Andrea Smith, is a co-founder of Incite! Women of Color Against Violence and the Boarding School Healing Project. She is the author of Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide, the editor of the Revolution Will Not Be Funded:...
Pilar Maschi
Pilar Maschi, is the Former Prisoner and Family Coordinator of Critical Resistance. She is a former prisoner who is a single parent and lives in the South Bronx. Pilar founded a political education program in a drug recovery center...
Kathleen Desautels
Kathleen Desautels is a Sister of Providence and a human rights worker on the staff of the Chicago-based 8th Day Center for Justice. At age 64 she served a six-month sentence in Illinois Greenville Federal Prison for civil disobedience...
Diana Delgado
Diana Delgado is a 35 yr. old survivor of domestic violence and recovering addict. She is a single mother of 4 who has been incarcerated numerous of times due to addiction that stemmed from abuse. She is a member...
Lucretia Clay-Ward
Lucretia Clay-Ward, is happily married and is working as a outreach worker and doing HIV casemanagement. Life is really good her, higher power has done so much for her, she can't thank him enough.