INVISIBLE LITERATURE

Spineless Books publishes poetry and artwork by prisoners to encourage literacy and art, to give a voice to the incarceration population, and to help raise awareness of this growing fraction of our human community.

We see this as a three stage process.

1. Creating a permanent web archive of writing by prisoners. Web publication will allow us to compile a potentially unlimited archive of writing with minimum delay and effort, freely available to anyone, allowing for different indexing strategies to make the material easily navigable.

2. Zines, journals, chapbooks. The web archive can make explicit the conditions under which the writing may be reprinted. The material will thus be available for publication in any number of contexts.

3. Publishing a book.

Publishing a book will take a long time, and will involve the painful necessity of choosing some poets and not others. Nevertheless, we hope our efforts will culminate in a book of writing by prisoners available to readers, libraries, and bookstores.

The work of compiling this archive represents the efforts of one poet grateful to have a voice who wants to give something back. If you too want to give something back, choose a poem and write the author a letter. Some of these poets will be in prison for life, some have lost touch with friends and family. In the time it would take you, gratefully, to write a rent check you could brighten somebody's day, or month, or year.

If you wish to volunteer your help in retyping poems or corresponding with our writers, please contact Spineless Books. If you are interested in donating used books to prisoners, or other efforts to encourage literacy, visit the Urbana-Champaign Books to Prisoners program website at www.books2prisoners.org.

Terms for our Authors

INVISIBLE LITERATURE