The Inside Literary Prize is the first major US literary prize judged exclusively by incarcerated readers. In December 2023, Freedom Reads launched the Inside Literary Prize in collaboration with the National Book Foundation, the Center for Justice Innovation, and Dallas bookstore owner Lori Feathers. For the inaugural 2024 Prize, more than 200 incarcerated judges across 12 prisons in Arizona, Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, and North Dakota read and voted on the shortlisted titles.
The 2024 Inside Literary Prize was awarded to Imani Perry for South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation at a ceremony held at The New York Public Library on August 1, 2024.
2024 Shortlist
The Rabbit Hutch
The Rabbit Hutch is a stunning debut novel about four teenagers—recently aged out of the state foster-care system—living together in an apartment building in the post-industrial Midwest, exploring the quest for transcendence and the desire for love.
The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories
The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories is a moving exploration of characters grappling with the ghosts of war and displacement—and one that speaks to the immediate political landscape we reckon with today.
South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
An essential, surprising journey through the history, rituals, and landscapes of the American South—and a revelatory argument for why you must understand the South in order to understand America.
Best Barbarian
The poems in Best Barbarian roam across the literary and social landscape, from Beowulf’s Grendel to the jazz musician Alice Coltrane, from reckoning with immigration at the U.S.–Mexico border to thinking through the fraught beauty of the moon on a summer night after the police have killed a Black man.
There is no question that this is the highest possible honor a book like this could ever receive. I take it to mean those who judged believed I was not careless or callous, that I use language in a way that felt like truth. This retroactive mandate is a gift I can never repay, but one I will forever be grateful for.
The 2025 Inside Literary Prize ceremony was held on July 10, 2025 at The New York Public Library, and was emceed by Freedom Reads Founder & CEO Reginald Dwayne Betts. The evening featured the four shortlisted authors, representatives from partner organizations, and remarks from the judges themselves via video, as well as special guest Lyndie Felsher, a 2024 Inside Literary Prize judge, who reflected on her experience as a judge and her life since her release.
2025 Finalist
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Inside judge quotation(s)?
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah was a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, and is the winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize for Best First Book. Raised in Spring Valley, New York, he now lives in the Bronx.