At the inaugural Inside Literary Prize ceremony, held at the New York Public Library's flagship location in Manhattan on August 1, authors and advocates reflected on the significance of the first major U.S. book award judged exclusively by incarcerated people. The jury for this year's award comprised more than 200 incarcerated individuals and Departments of Corrections librarians from 12 prisons across six states: Arizona, Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, and North Dakota.
The Inside Literary Prize was launched late last year by Freedom Reads, the National Book Foundation (NBF), and the Center for Justice Innovation (CJI), with help from Interabang Books co-owner Lori Feathers. Freedom Reads founder and CEO Reginald Dwayne Betts, who emceed the event, discussed the awards' origins in his opening remarks, citing France's "inmate Goncourt" prize, an offshoot of the country's most prestigious book award, as the inspiration for the Inside Literary Prize.
"One of the ways that you show that you care about people is to allow them to have an active part in civic engagement," Betts said. "If the Gutenberg printing press is our greatest creation, then that means that literature is our greatest testimony, and the people who say what matters and what is to be valued are our greatest treasure. And if you choose to decide that people in prison don't matter, then you are choosing, maybe, to argue that redemption isn't possible."
This award purse was $4,860, which Betts said represented five years' of work at 54-cents-per-hour—the wage he earned working at the prison library while incarcerated.
This year's nominees were Tess Gunty's The Rabbit Hutch, Jamil Jan Kochai's The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories, Imani Perry's South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation, and Roger Reeves's Best Barbarian (all of which won or were finalists for the National Book Awards). All four nominees delivered remarks throughout the evening, as did Feathers, CJI executive director Courtney Bryan, NBF executive director Ruth Dickey, and Andrea Smith, senior librarian for the Minnesota Department of Corrections.
"They entered into the experience with an open mind and the commitment to the process because it was their integrity at stake," said Smith of the incarcerated jurors she worked with. "This was their chance to make one vote for something permanent and lasting. I don't know what this means for recidivism but i do know what it means for my community. It means hope. It means words matter. It means stories matter, and people matter. And it means that we're listening."
In a video message from six incarcerated judges from the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Shakopee, a judge named Chelsea explained the value of the experience for her. "Being a judge…just meant a lot for me,” she said. “It meant that my voice mattered, because for the last four and a half years, my voice hasn’t mattered. I got to be Chelsea. I wasn’t just my number.”
Imani Perry was named as the inaugural winner, letting out a sob when Betts made the announcement. In her remarks earlier that evening, Perry had discussed writing about prisons in South to America, saying, "[T]o tell the story of my home truthfully required me to address prisons, but more importantly, people who were once prisoners," including the late Johnny "Imani" Harris, whom she used to speak to on the phone as a child, and whom Perry inspired to change his name.
"In this honor, I renew my sense of responsibility to the millions of people incarcerated and under state supervision," said Perry in her acceptance speech. "Not as a matter of charity, but rather out of the deepest respect for the insight that comes from seeing society from the corners that it keeps hidden. And for the wisdom of those whom it keeps out of view. But most of all out of care for those in the grasp of confinement. I think this prize is most of all a recognition of readers and may this recognition of the intellectual life that exists behind bars extend much further… God bless the organizers who believe in freedom. And, to the people inside, please know when I say ‘we’ and when I refer to 'my people,' I mean you too."
