Scott Wilson

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A Reading and Writing Group for Inmates, organized by Scott Wilson 01/27/2024

For the past 18 months, I have met weekly with a group of inmates at the Santa Barbara County Jail, joining them at a small stainless steel table bolted to the floor at the end of rows of bunk beds. The men of cell block East-23 and I spend about an hour and half each Friday talking about a book we have chosen to read together and any writing, based on questions I have raised for them in advance, that they may have done with the small golf pencils they are allowed. The time is among the highlights of my week. And their gratitude for the books and writing supplies - pencils, composition books and graph paper, Post-it Notes - is evident during every session.

You have helped pay for this.

The group started with a simple idea: A book and writing club that would function just as these clubs do outside prison walls. The county sheriff thought the idea was good enough to approve a “non-escort badge” for me, meaning I can go into the cell blocks without a guard, saving staff time and putting the men more at ease. We have chosen more than 40 books together, works by Alice McDermott and Zora Neale Hurston, Ernest Hemingway and James Baldwin, Tim O’Brien and Michael Herr and David Finkel, S.E. Hinton and Stephen Graham Jones, Ken Kesey and Mary Shelley, a biography of Robert Oppenheimer, an account of Shackleton’s doomed and triumphant voyage on the Endurance, classics and current best-sellers, fantasy and journalism. We’re reading Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” now.

We’ve also gone beyond the initial plan. After the first few meetings, I decided to expand the original scope to make sure the men participating found something each week they liked to read, not just our common book. I made a deal with them: Pick a book you want to read and I’ll get it for you. In return, you have to review it for us, orally or in writing. Should we read it? Did you like it, if so, why? This has proven to be a lot of fun and I believe has helped develop an interest in reading and writing that will extend beyond their terms of incarceration (and vastly widened my own reading interests.)

But the expansion has increased the burn rate of the money I raised in 2022 to fund this project. So I’m asking you here to support a new round of funding to keep this going. Yes, there is a “who’s saving whom” element to this project, which makes it personal to me. But I believe it has brought some joy to dozens of men who have participated in the group and a lasting sense of the magic found in great writing, whether read or written by the men themselves. If you feel as if you can afford to make a donation, thank you very much in advance. I think it matters to them - and certainly to me. Here’s the link to the GoFundMe page:

A Reading and Writing Group for Inmates, organized by Scott Wilson Happy holidays to all of you, and my best wishes for a joyful New Year. Since yo… Scott Wilson needs your support for A Reading and Writing Group for Inmates

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