The first US Book Prize judged entirely by incarcerated people has announced a winner.
The inaugural Inside Prize has named its first recipient—the author Imani Perry. The new book award is “a collaborative project of Freedom Reads, the National Book Foundation, Center for Justice Innovation and Dallas bookstore owner Lori Feathers.” And in a novel move, all the prize judges are incarcerated individuals.
Perry’s award-winning title, South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation, is part memoir, part travelogue. The book documents the author’s trip through the American South, and double functions as a historical interrogation and a personal inquiry. A New York Times bestseller, South to America… was previously feted by the National Book Award when it received the Nonfiction prize in 2022.
The Inside Prize initially enlisted more than 200 judges at prisons across the country to vote on books. According to a press release, the shortlisting process involved “incarcerated people from 12 prisons in six states—Arizona, Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, and North Dakota.” After judges had read the titles, representatives from the sponsoring organizations visited the prisons and held conversations with readers before final votes were tallied.
The judges’ shortlist included other recent literary works, like Tess Gunty’s novel, The Rabbit Hutch, Jamil Jan Kochai’s collection, The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories, and Roger Reeves’ poetry collection, Best Barbarian.
Chelsea, a judge currently incarcerated in Minnesota Correctional Facility-Shakopee, selected South to America…for its pathos and power. “I have not had a book make me that emotional,” she said in an interview. “I think I cried during some of our discussions.”
The author and Freedom Reads Founder Reginald Dwayne Betts summarized the Inside Prize mission via press release in The Guardian. As the only prize distributed entirely by incarcerated people, Betts says the award seeks to meaningfully connect incarcerated individuals to “our shared national cultural conversation.”
Chelsea praised her role in the process, telling press, “Being a judge…just meant a lot for me…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.”
In her acceptance speech, Perry expressed “care for those in the grasp of confinement,” and recognized “the intellectual life that exists behind bars.” As winner, she received a hand-crafted wooden trophy, and a cash prize of $4,860. This amount “represents five years’ of work at 54-cents-per-hour,” the wage earned by Betts when he was incarcerated and worked in the prison library.
You can learn more about the prize here, and hear more from the prize judges here.
Image via, credit Beowolf Sheehan
