From Shelf Awareness:
Cool Idea of the Day: Books Behind Bars
Kay Allison, owner of the Quest Bookshop, Charlottesville, Va., “is the brains behind a program called Books Behind Bars; prisoners from nearly 40 facilities write to her asking for reading material,” according to Newsplex.com, which observed that “Kay has helped thousands of prisoners mentally escape in the last 20 years.”
“I just think they’re people who made a mistake and they deserve another chance, and you can read that in the letters,” she said.
Allison and volunteers “sort through hundreds of donated books, stored on shelves on the second floor of the [bookshop], looking to quench each prisoner’s thirst for knowledge. Kay says that many of the prisoners who write in are young people trying to educate themselves or individuals studying for the GED.”
Filed under: books, charlottesville, reading, virginia Tagged: | Kay Allison, Quest Bookshop, Shelf Awareness
Sounds like a WriterHouse collaboration project!
I think that’s a great idea.
Another way to help prisoners is to donate materials to the prison libraries – which benefits all inmates in a facility, rather than just the ones that can afford stamps and receive packages. Contact the Department of Correctional Education (rather than Department of Corrections, which has different priorities) for info on how to do this.
Thanks for the tip, Been There. I would not have thought to look for a Dept of Correctional Ed.
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Heard about your and your work on NPR this morning! What a great service!
How can I contribute books to this project? I live in Buckingham County.
Diana, try the contact information at the Quest Institute’s website: http://thequestinstitute.org/. Good luck!