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…
December 14, 2025

PLP Letter Data Collection Project

In fall of 2025 a small team of volunteers initiated a review of 1,350 letters requesting free books that volunteers processed in Sept. 2025. We’re excited to share some of the results of the data collection project below.  The complete slideshow can be seen here.
October 20, 2025

Local high school seniors come to PLP to answer letters

For the past several years, PLP has hosted students from Berkeley High School’s Law and Social Justice program. The students come twice a semester to respond to letters from incarcerated readers all over the country. The students select books, fill out address labels and invoices (including personal note to the recipient on the back) for the packages. Kids of this […]
October 6, 2025

Banned Books Week 2025

As an organization that sends books on so many different topics to incarcerated readers, we are used to getting letters from prisons saying a book that we sent (seemingly uncontroversial) is disallowed.   Deep sigh.  The new restriction then gets added to the list for that facility and we re-send a different book to the incarcerated person. It’s an ongoing […]
July 13, 2025

Kids books for incarcerated parents!

As an all-volunteer organization we rely on each other to enhance and expand our efforts. One volunteer decided we should stock kids books and now we do! Incarcerated people write to us asking for these books so they can read them over the phone to their kids or during in-person visits. 😍

Sending books to incarcerated people for over 40 years

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 people prepare to lead successful lives after incarceration. We believe that all people have a right to read.

Please consider donating to the 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.

Recent Posts

Prisoners – want books?

Mailing address for U.S. prisoner book requests: Prisoner Literature Project c/o Bound Together Books 1369 Haight St San Francisco, CA 94117 There's more info here on what else prisoners need to include with their requests.