Educational Justice and Appalachian Prisons Symposium

This just in from Katy Ryan. Not only is it open to the public, it's free!

The schedule for the Educational Justice & Appalachian Prisons Symposium, April 4 - 6, is now complete: http://educationaljusticeappalachianprisons.wordpress.com/featured-events/

There will be roundtables and keynotes on imprisonment, higher education, and restorative justice. There will be artists, scholars, judges, lawyers, correctional administrators, imprisoned and formerly imprisoned people. Plenty of food and good company. Please spread the word!  

Highlights include-- 

• Dwayne Betts, Poet and author of A Question of Freedom; served eight years in Virginia prisons. (I'm teaching his memoir right now, and it's great. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2010/12/the-exchange-r-dwayne-betts-on-prison-poetry-and-justice.html
• Rebecca Ginsburg, Founder of the Education Justice Project (Univ of Illinois, Champagne-Urbana); author of Cabin, Quarter, Plantation: Architecture and Landscapes of North American Slavery (Yale UP, 2010); and co-editor of At Home with Apartheid: The hidden landscapes of domestic service in Johannesburg (U of Virginia P, 2011) 
• Jean Trounstine, Co-Director of Changing Lives Through Literature and author of Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women’s Prison
• Kyes Stevens, Founder of the Alabama Creative Arts + Education Project (Auburn Univ.)
• Jim Rubenstein, Commissioner of the WV Division of Corrections
• Larry Starcher, former WV Supreme Court Justice
• Jim Nolan, Professor of Sociology, former police officer and FBI officer
• Valena Beety, Assoc. Law Professor and Chair of the WVU Innocence Project
• Anne Rice, Coordinator of TEDx talks inside prisons; African American Studies, Lehman College
• Graduates of the WVU English program who have been teaching in prisons, Laura Leigh Morris and Jonny Blevins
• Lashonia Etheridge-Bey, D.C. Office on Returning Citizens Affairs
• Jacqueline Sakho, Mediator in capital cases; Heinz Fellow, Duquesne Univ.

All events are free and open to the public.