Prisoners Literature Project – An all-volunteer grassroots group that sends over a thousand free book packages to incarcerated people across the United States every month.

October 16, 2026

Matching grant for book purchase during Prison Banned Books Week

Help us continue to send quality books to readers in prison. Every book purchased during this week will be matched by a generous donor.

Books banned in U.S. prisons represent the largest and most pervasive form of book censorship in the country, with individual state departments of corrections banning tens of thousands of titles.

PLP has to track these titles and add to the long list when books get returned because they are now disallowed by a prison.

October 14, 2026

University of Utah “Alt Breaks” comes to PLP

PLP was pleased to host a group from the University of Utah again this week, as part of the Alternative Breaks program of the Bennion Center. On Alternative Breaks, teams of students, along with faculty/staff partners, work alongside communities throughout the western United States on a variety of community-identified projects to address a variety of social and environmental justice topics. […]

August 31, 2026

Volunteers do their serious best to fill the book requests and we like to have some fun too!

July 19, 2026

A generous new book donation from Tor!

Thank you so much to Tor Books (and its various labels) for donating so many wonderful sci-fi, fantasy, romantasy and other genre fiction to PLP. (We can’t wait to send it all to incarcerated folks looking for great new reads!)

July 2, 2026

New article about PLP in Berkeleyside…

A reporter at local Bay Area news site Berkeleyside ended up interviewing multiple volunteers and attending sessions, and the result was this great write-up on our books to prisoners program.

April 27, 2026

Matching Grant Opportunity April 25 -May 2, 2026 in honor of Indie Bookstores

Please consider purchasing a book off these bookstore partner wishlists so that PLP can reach the max matching grant amount! If you’re in the Bay Area, books purchased at the local bookstores listed below with PLP displays will also be matched by the grant. Stop by and check them out. Bookstores are the best! Pegasus on Solano in BerkeleyPegasus on […]

April 19, 2026

Winter 2026 Thank You letters

We’re happy to share some of the recent thank you letters PLP has received from book recipients. Many of them are now posted around our library for volunteers to browse. It’s a pleasure to know books are “saving lives” behind bars.

April 17, 2026

“I don’t know how to read, write or simple math…”

January 29, 2026

How did we fulfill some recent book requests?

It’s always fun to see which books on our shelves match up with requests from readers.

December 14, 2025

PLP’s 2025 Year in Review

To end the year, here are some highlights from PLP’s busy 2025:
— PLP established an Anti-Censorship team (ACT) to start pushing back on tightening restrictions from prisons about the books we send. Our first effort is to target jails in California (some nearby and in the Bay Area) that won’t even allow us to send NEW, high quality books to incarcerated readers.
–Sent over 15,000 packages to incarcerated people, amounting to over 45,000 books!
–Held over 260 book packing sessions (3 hours each), including some with local high school students. That’s over 6,000 volunteers hours responding to letters alone!
— And more…

Sending books to people behind bars for over 45 years

Bookshelves at the Prisoners Literature Project

Prisoners Literature Project is an inclusive, all-volunteer, grassroots nonprofit whose purpose is to encourage reading, the pursuit of knowledge, and self-determination among incarcerated people. By sending free reading materials to those behind bars, PLP aims to foster learning and critical thinking and help prepare people to lead successful lives after incarceration. We believe that all people have a right to read.

Please consider donating to PLP or volunteering your time (if you live in the Bay Area, CA!) to help us answer letters from prisoners who write us from all over the United States.