In December 2023, Freedom Reads, the National Book Foundation, and the Center for Justice Innovation, with support from Lori Feathers, launched the Inside Literary Prize, which seeks to honor the insights incarcerated readers add to cultural conversations.
The first Prize was awarded on August 1, 2024, by a jury of hundreds of incarcerated readers from 12 prisons in six states — Arizona, Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, and North Dakota — to Imani Perry, author of South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation.
Below are the shortlisted books for the 2025 Inside Literary Prize. These titles were selected by a Selection Committee comprising incarcerated readers, writers, and Departments of Corrections librarians, who chose from the list of Finalists for the 2023 National Book Awards for Fiction and Translated Literature.
This year's prize will be awarded in June 2025 to one exceptional book by a jury of 300 incarcerated individuals from a dozen prisons across the nation. This spring, Inside Literary Prize organizers will travel to each prison to lead live discussions, conduct voting, and host literary readings with acclaimed authors.
Last spring, the Freedom Reads team visited all 12 participating prisons in the 2024 Inside Literary Prize to lead live discussions of the 2024 shortlisted books and host literary readings with acclaimed writers and poets, including Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Roger Bonair-Agard, Randall Horton, Douglas Kearney, and Reginald Dwayne Betts.
Serving as an incarcerated judge for the inaugural Inside Literary Prize was a highlight of 23 years behind the wall. It gave me an opportunity to view books as much more than a reader; it taught me to peel back the layers of each work and to appreciate the story, whether I liked it or not. It was a lesson in critical thinking that helped me analyze each facet of the tale. I wasn't just reading about a foreign walk of life. I was living it.
