Prisoners Literature Project sends out over 30,000 books a year! There are a huge range of topics requested by incarcerated readers. We do our best to stock books in some of the more popular areas. These includes thrillers, fiction, science fiction, fantasy, romance, history, self-help, business, graphic novels and much more. What we have on hand is somewhat at the whim of current book donations. However, PLP does buy books via remainder and other sources because we want to sent quality items that meet the request.

Here are a few such titles that we thought we’d share.

People in prison want to write whether it be memoirs, fiction, poetry, screenplays or song lyrics.

Many incarcerated people are keen to learn a new language. Books related to learning Spanish are most commonly asked for. Prisons have started to ban foreign language books because they are considered a security threat. However, Spanish is so prevalent in the U.S. that it seems to make it through the censors.

For years PLP has received requests for books about coding. They have been prohibitively expensive. We are so glad to have this Intro to Python Programming book to send. PLP received permission from the author to print it so we publish it ourselves.

A necessary book. People in prison have time to work on their education but don’t always have the resources available to them. We have many copies of this GED book to send.

We are pleased with this new large print book section in our library. We have struggled to fill large print requests in the past but now we have a selection!

Self-help books are one of our top requests. The market is flooded with such books and quality may vary. So, we purposefully purchase some books that we know are providing solid information. These are some of our favorite books to pass along to seekers.

Yes, we receive a flow of request for conspiracy-related topics. They trend in prisons. It’s hard to find books to send that counter these ideas but we do send a handout which explains why we don’t send such books.

This newly available re-entry book is a great resource. It has been put together by the Education Justice Project which is a part of the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The group granted us permission to produce copies. Such books are really sought after and having a current resource to send makes us all happy.

Ah, the ever popular yet elusive almanac — a 1,000+ pages of facts, history, current events and more. It’s the closest thing we stock to an encyclopedia or the internet in one volume. Volunteers joke that almanacs are a gold ticket as they’re expensive to source and infrequently on the shelves. Recent money donations allowed us to order 250 copies. Yay! They will go quickly!

Sure, why not? There is an ever growing genre micro categorization and when we started getting regular requests from letter writers for paranormal romance we took action. PLP volunteers regularly find these books at friends of the library sales for $1-2 which is a nice price.

The first amendment grants prisoners the right to practice the religion of their choice. Pagan/Wiccan has rituals that a single person can participate in. We were getting so many letters asking for this subject that PLP compiled this edition based on open source articles which we print regularly. This edition is now specifically requested by people in prison. Word gets out about a good thing.

PLP is an all-volunteer organization so needless to way we couldn’t send out thousands of books each year without so many people contributing in different ways to our efforts. Hear from a few of our volunteers…

Berkeley High students interested in law and social justice have participated in multiple book selection sessions this past year in coordination with another local social justice organization The Ahimsa Collective

The students were often intrigued by the letters they were responding to and did their best to find the most appropriate books to fulfil the sometimes very specific or broad requests.

The four students pictured here are off to college in the Fall. We hope they carry a little bit of their experience at PLP with them.

We look forward to hosting more student sessions next year!

The most common requests are for genre fiction (thrillers, romance, sci-fi/fantasy, etc), self-help, business, drawing, graphic novels, science, GED material, exercise, almanacs and so much more. People also ask for some very specific topics and we do our best to fulfill the spirit of the inquiry.

Here is a sample of letters that volunteers responded to recently.

Also we love that he shared it with others at his facility to enjoy.

Thick fantasy/sci-fi novels like “The Starless Crown” are a popular request from incarcerated readers. The more pages to escape into… Thanks again to Tor Publishing for donating multiple copies of this book to PLP!

We are happy to share the following letters that we received during the holidays from book recipients.

We have wishlists at many of our bookstore partners!

PLP was contacted by a local group “The Ahimsa Collective” asking if we would host a session as part of the 6 day intensive internship between The Ahimsa Collective and Berkeley High School rising and graduating seniors in the law and social justice two year elective. We were pleased to be able to welcome eleven teens into our library to learn about what we do. They read letters, selected books to meet the request and wrote address labels, invoices and notes for the recipient. At the end of the 3-hour session we had 6 tubs of packages to ship out!

Please check out the work that the Ahimsa Collective is doing around Restorative Justice in the Community, Rentry Housing and Support, Victim Offender Dialogues and other meaningful efforts: https://www.ahimsacollective.net/

We hear that the PLP session was a highlight for the teens and we hope to host additional sessions during the school year. They are considering do a book drive for our efforts as well. It’s great to connect with other local programs that are working on social justice efforts.

Last call for spring cleaning… If you live in San Francisco or are willing to travel there, you can donate any kind of good quality unwanted stuff to the Community Thrift Store in person, saying they are for the benefit of Prisoners Literature Project. We’ll get the proceeds after they are sold! This has been a great source for postage money for PLP over the years. Reuse, reduce, recycle!