Book Nook - After Jail, Before Freedom

After Jail, Before Freedom tells the story of five men who get out of prison and try to stay out. Joined together by their experience in a writing class at the Richmond City Jail, which led to their first book, Writing Our Way Out: Memoirs from Jail, this sequel picks up where their stories left off: With each man trying to figure out how to stay free. It is an onerous journey marked by the stigma of a felony conviction, racial discrimination, unstable living conditions, the allure of addiction, enduring trauma, ongoing problems with the criminal justice system, the promise of change, and, at times, the reality of it.

David Coogan is a professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is the author of Writing Our Way Out: Memoirs from Jail (2015) and the Cambridge Companion to American Prison Writing and Mass Incarceration; the founder of Open Minds, the award-winning, college-in-jail program; and the director of Write Your Way Out, a pioneering criminal justice diversion program that enables low-level offenders to avoid jail. Coogan teaches courses in prison writing, memoir, and rhetoric and is the recipient of the distinguished teaching award from VCU’s College of Humanities and Sciences.