In a time of increasing mass incarceration, US prisons and jails are becoming a major
source of literary production. Prisoners write for themselves, fellow prisoners, family
members, and teachers. However, too few write for college credit. In the dearth of well-
organized higher education in US prisons, noncredit programs established by colleges and
universities have served as a leading means of informal learning in these settings.
Thousands of teachers have entered prisons, many teaching writing or relying on writing …

Demands for more innovative approaches to prison education have flooded the calls for
papers in rhetoric and composition journals (Hinshaw & Jacobi 2018; Smith McKoy and
Alexander 2018), marking a necessary push toward more dialogic prison engagement and
collaboration. Specific to this special issue, Hinshaw and Jacobi (2018) hope to curate
pedagogical awareness to include mass incarceration into the rhetoric and composition
vocabulary, taking a critical approach to the process of establishing prison education …