Four people emailed me in December of 2022 about France’s new Goncourt des détenus, a major literary award judged by people serving time in the country’s prisons. One person suggested it, the others were just passing on information. In my head, I demurred each time. Freedom Reads had opened only a handful of Freedom Libraries. Every day was already filled with something fantastically new, and our team was too strained to add another major project.
But truth be told, I leap toward good adventure (how many degrees do I have?) and, after three people mentioned the French book award, ideas for a Stateside version of the Goncourt were leaping unbidden into my head. But we were mad-dashing around the country with FreedomLibraries. Quiet as kept, from day one this Freedom Reads journey has been its own Field of Dreams. We opened our first Freedom Library at Massachusetts’s MCI-Norfolk four days after my forty-first birthday in 2021. Three weeks later, Wayne sent us a kite. The men and the other cellblocks had no access to the books we’d brought. He requested a Freedom Library for every cellblock in the prison.
By the fall of 2022, we were delivering dozens of Freedom Libraries to prisons throughout New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. And before too long, we’d return to MCI-Norfolk with eighteen more Freedom Libraries. That’s when we realized we’d return as often as necessary, with as many Freedom Libraries as needed to build that bridge to freedom.
That fall, all kinds of people gave me suggestions on what our focus should be: develop a cadre of formerly incarcerated lawyers; expand college programs in prison; publish books from people incarcerated. A friend wanted me to be an ombudsman. But Freedom Reads was busy developing what would become a 20-plus-person team that has opened nearly 700 Freedom Libraries across 16 states.
Still, those early months of 2023 had the idea of the Goncourt returning like count time. After the first rush, in quick succession, two board members, a close friend, and a strange dream brought up the prize. Months later, Natalie Green of the National Book Foundation asked me to join a small group of folks, including others from her team, people from the Center of Court Innovation, former Book Critics Circle Judge and Bookstore owner Lori Feathers, and Kevin Kempf of the Correctional Leaders Association. The question was a familiar one. “Dwayne, remember the New York Times article about the Gancourt des détenus? Would Freedom Reads be interested?”
My time in prison and our work with Freedom Reads had already proven readers were waiting. Once, we sent two dozen men Honoree Jeffers’ The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois months before it was released. We’d sent in hundreds of copies of books by Miriam Toews, S.A. Crosby, Richard Wright, Louise Eldrich, and Victor E. Frankl. Our team is dope folks. And we've served time in prison, have loved ones in prison, been neighbors with people who’ve been to prison, and been victims of crimes. Already we've walked in so many more prisons than I served time. Walked into a hundred prisons across this country and admitted all the ways believing freedom begins with a book saved our lives. If the only question was could you find excited, thoughtful, idiosyncratic judges to read five books in less time than humanly possible, I knew the answer was yes.
And the rest, as we approach our third Inside Literary Prize ceremony, is the history we’re building. And that history is robust and refreshing. That history includes Colleen, who’s been involved in the Inside Literary Prize each year from where she is incarcerated in Minnesota. And also Maria, incarcerated in New Jersey, whose insight into the books and short riff on what I’ve tried to make of my life brought me to tears. And the dozens of men and women who thanked us for walking into prisons that no one returns to. The many people who have given to us, including Bill, a former Inside Literary Prize Judge who is incarcerated in Missouri. A few weeks after his experience, he sent us a $1,000 donation. “I hope it helps you in some small way. Sorry it couldn’t have been more, but I gave everything I have at the moment.”
Each year the Freedom Reads team organizes and facilitates 300 judges deeply engaging with some of the most interesting, vibrant, sophisticatedly complex, and varied books being published today. These writers have encountered the works of Justin Torres and Imani Perry, Tess Gungy, Paul Harding, and literally a dozen others.
At last year's festival, Justin Torres talked about when we met, nearly eighteen years before that day. I know how long ago it was because my firstborn son was about to be born. Micah is now headed off to college. Back in 2007, when I met Justin, I’d just visited a prison, now we’re planning on visiting one together. Between our meeting and that trip I took alone, and all the years and the trip we’ll take together, there is the birth of both of my sons. That Justin remembers how I was shook, afraid, and nervous thinking about becoming a father, at being a father, reminds me of how close to prison I was then.
And still, I realize that back then I also understood that books were the pathway that allowed me to talk to people about their lives and my own. That’s always been the freedom that kept me buoyed, and this work of The Inside Literary Prize has let me hear many others tell me the same.
If you agree, celebrate this third year of the Inside Literary Prize with a gift to Freedom Reads. And read the winner and finalists.