A Reading and Writing Group for Inmates

For the past 18 months, I have met weekly with a group of inmates at the Santa Barbara County Jail, joining them at a small stainless steel table bolted to the floor at the end of rows of bunk beds. The men of cell block East-23 and I spend about an hour and half each Friday talking about a book we have chosen to read together and any writing, based on questions I have raised for them in advance, that they may have done with the small golf pencils they are allowed. The time is among the highlights of my week. And their gratitude for the books and writing supplies - pencils, composition books and graph paper, Post-it Notes - is evident during every session.

You have helped pay for this.

The group started with a simple idea: A book and writing club that would function just as these clubs do outside prison walls. The county sheriff thought the idea was good enough to approve a “non-escort badge” for me, meaning I can go into the cell blocks without a guard, saving staff time and putting the men more at ease. We have chosen more than 40 books together, works by Alice McDermott and Zora Neale Hurston, Ernest Hemingway and James Baldwin, Tim O’Brien and Michael Herr and David Finkel, S.E. Hinton and Stephen Graham Jones, Ken Kesey and Mary Shelley, a biography of Robert Oppenheimer, an account of Shackleton’s doomed and triumphant voyage on the Endurance, classics and current best-sellers, fantasy and journalism. We’re reading Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” now.

We’ve also gone beyond the initial plan. After the first few meetings, I decided to expand the original scope to make sure the men participating found something each week they liked to read, not just our common book. I made a deal with them: Pick a book you want to read and I’ll get it for you. In return, you have to review it for us, orally or in writing. Should we read it? Did you like it, if so, why? This has proven to be a lot of fun and I believe has helped develop an interest in reading and writing that will extend beyond their terms of incarceration (and vastly widened my own reading interests.)

But the expansion has increased the burn rate of the money I raised in 2022 to fund this project. So I’m asking you here to support a new round of funding to keep this going. Yes, there is a “who’s saving whom” element to this project, which makes it personal to me. But I believe it has brought some joy to dozens of men who have participated in the group and a lasting sense of the magic found in great writing, whether read or written by the men themselves. If you feel as if you can afford to make a donation, thank you very much in advance. I think it matters to them - and certainly to me.

First appeal: October 2022

My name is Scott Wilson. I have been a professional journalist for three decades, inspired initially by the books, essays, poems and plays I read when I was young. I have lived in many parts of the world, covered wars and presidents, wildfires and earthquakes on several continents, homelessness, mass shootings and justice reform in this country. I want to share what I have learned with a segment of our society that has few opportunities to deepen its education - the incarcerated. I have started a program where each week at the Santa Barbara County Jail, in cellblock E-23, I meet with roughly 15 incarcerated men. We begin by sharing a quote from literature, then reading from their journals based on a question from our last assigned reading, then picking as a group what we intend to read for our next session. I volunteer my time, obviously, and so far have paid for the books myself. But this is unsustainable in the long run. The jail provides composition books and pencils. My goal is to raise $5,000 a year to pay for books - and only books - for the inmates. I believe it is important for them to each have their own copies to mark up, take notes in, etc - and to give them a greater sense of ownership of what we are trying to achieve. The goal is to improve writing skills, to read great literature (new and old) together, and to foster a lifelong love of reading and writing that will carry over and inspire far beyond their time behind bars. Many have expressed an interest in writing their own stories one day. We also plan to grow the program in the months ahead to include more inmates. To reiterate: Any donation will go SOLELY toward the purchase of books. Thank you very much for your consideration and for any donation you may be able to spare. My warmest regards, Scott