The Inside Literary Prize is the first major US literary prize judged exclusively by incarcerated readers. In December 2023, Freedom Reads launched the Inside Literary Prize in collaboration with the National Book Foundation, the Center for Justice Innovation, and Dallas bookstore owner Lori Feathers. For the 2025 Prize, 300 incarcerated judges across 15 prisons in California, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, Ohio, and Puerto Rico read and voted on the shortlisted titles.
The 2025 Inside Literary Prize was awarded to Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah for Chain-Gang All-Stars at a ceremony held at The New York Public Library on July 10, 2025.
2025 Shortlist
Chain-Gang All-Stars
Enter a world where, livestreamed to millions, prisoners fight like gladiators for the ultimate prize: their freedom. Fan-favourite female stars Loretta Thurwar and Hamara ‘Hurricane Staxxx’ Stacker are teammates and lovers. Thurwar is nearing the end of her time on the circuit, free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. But as protestors clash with the baying crowds and the programme’s corporate owners stack the odds against her – will the price be simply too high?
Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system’s unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means.
This Other Eden
In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discover an island where they can make a life together. More than a century later, the Honeys' descendants remain, with an eccentric, diverse band of neighbours. But during one tumultuous summer at the dawn of the twentieth century, one prejudiced missionary lands on the island's shores, disrupting the community's fragile balance with everlasting consequences.
Full of lyricism and power, Paul Harding's This Other Eden explores the hopes and dreams and resilience of those seen not to fit a world brutally intolerant of difference.
On a Woman’s Madness
On a Woman’s Madness tells the story of Noenka, a courageous Black woman trying to live a life of her own choosing. When her abusive husband of just nine days refuses her request for divorce, Noenka flees her hometown in Suriname, on South America’s tropical northeastern coast, for the capital city of Paramaribo. Unsettled and unsupported, her life in this new place is illuminated by romance and new freedoms, but also forever haunted by her past and society’s expectations.
Strikingly translated by Lucy Scott, Astrid Roemer’s classic queer novel is a tentpole of European and post-colonial literature.
Blackouts
Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly but who has haunted the edges of his life: Juan Gay. Playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized, Juan has a project to pass along, one built around a true artifact of a book—Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns—and its devastating history.
A book about storytelling—its legacies, dangers, delights, and potential for change—and a bold exploration of form, art, and love, Justin Torres’s Blackouts uses fiction to see through the inventions of history and narrative.
For 2025, 300 people incarcerated in six states and territories across the country voted on the winning book after weeks of reading and deliberation. Incarcerated people from 15 prisons in six states and territories–California, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, Ohio, and Puerto Rico–were sent the shortlisted books to read and consider.
Freedom Reads spearheaded an Inside Literary Prize tour, where representatives from the sponsoring organizations visited the 15 prisons and held conversations with readers inside who then each voted for their choice to win the Prize.
Rolando, a 2025 Inside Literary Prize judge at Western Illinois Correctional Center, shared: “I love it because it literally transports you into another world. And not only that, but you get to see the opinions and the ideas of other people, especially the author. And for me, it expands my mind. For me, not only does it transport me, but I get to learn more of the world. I get to learn of other cultures, of other people, and that, for me, is special, because it just opens up, just a new dimension.”
I liked Chain Gang All-Stars because there is a strong social justice message throughout the book. The book is very entertaining and I think it will also help people to rethink how they view people who are incarcerated and help them to realize that we aren't the monsters they view us as.
There is no question that this is the highest possible honor a book like this could ever receive. I take it to mean those who judged believed I was not careless or callous, that I use language in a way that felt like truth. This retroactive mandate is a gift I can never repay, but one I will forever be grateful for.
The 2025 Inside Literary Prize ceremony was held on July 10, 2025 at The New York Public Library, and was emceed by Freedom Reads Founder & CEO Reginald Dwayne Betts. The evening featured the four shortlisted authors, representatives from partner organizations, and remarks from the judges via video. Special guest Lyndie Felsher, a 2024 Inside Literary Prize judge, also gave remarks reflecting on her experience as a judge and her life since her release. The Prize was awarded to Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah for Chain-Gang All-Stars, who dedicated the award to all the men and women Inside.
2025 Inside Literary Prize Winner
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah was a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, and is the winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize for Best First Book. Raised in Spring Valley, New York, he now lives in the Bronx.