In today’s episode, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah sits down with Freedom Reads Founder & CEO Reginald Dwayne Betts and Steven Parkhurst, Communications Manager at Freedom Reads. Adjei-Brenyah reads from his novel Chain-Gang All-Stars, which was shortlisted for the 2025 Inside Literary Prize, the first major US literary prize awarded exclusively by incarcerated judges. Chain-Gang All-Stars takes place in an imagined future where people serving life sentences can opt-in to gladiatorial death matches in an attempt to gain their freedom. Loretta Thurwar and Hurricane Staxxx are lovers and fan favorites, and as they compete, they are forced to confront the brutal spectacle they’ve become a part of. Adjei-Brenyah delves into the idea of the prison system as a failure of imagination and reflects on the seven years he spent writing this novel. This conversation is discerning; it attempts to answer the hard questions, to understand desperation and the necessity of forgiveness. Adjei-Brenyah is sharp and curious in his consideration of what reading means for freedom.

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is a National Book Foundation “5 under 35” honoree and the author of Friday Black and Chain-Gang All-Stars. His Friday Black collection won the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. His debut novel, Chain-Gang All-Stars, was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction and selected as a New York Times Top 10 Book of the Year. He currently lives in the Bronx.

In today’s episode, author Paul Harding sits down with Freedom Reads Founder & CEO Reginald Dwayne Betts and Allie Salazar Gonzales, Development Manager at Freedom Reads. Harding reads from his novel This Other Eden, which was shortlisted for the 2025 Inside Literary Prize, the first major US literary prize awarded exclusively by incarcerated judges. This Other Eden takes place on Apple Island, where the Honey family, descended from the formerly-enslaved Benjamin Honey, has lived for generations alongside Irish immigrants and other people trying to create a new home for themselves. Based on the real story of Malaga Island off the coast of Maine, Paul vividly captures the beauty of this island community and its struggle against forced displacement by mainland officials. In this episode, Harding explores the idea of writing into a literary canon and shares his intentions behind the sentence-level construction of his novel. Harding reflects on the process of writing, creating characters, and, of course, what reading means for freedom.

Paul is the author of three novels, Tinkers, Enon and This Other Eden. Tinkers won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Paul has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and PEN America. He has taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the Michener Center for Writers, and Harvard University. He is currently a distinguished professor of creative writing at Emerson College in Boston.

In today’s episode, Astrid Roemer sits down with Allie Salazar Gonzalez, Development Manager at Freedom Reads, and Dempsey, Resident Creative Writer at Freedom Reads. Following a reading from her novel On a Woman’s Madness, first released in 1982 and translated from Dutch by Lucy Scott, Roemer talks about feminism and the power of her words. On a Woman’s Madness was shortlisted for the 2025 Inside Literary Prize, the first major US literary prize awarded exclusively by incarcerated judges. The novel follows Noenka, a Black, queer, woman in Suriname as she seeks freedom from an abusive marriage. Through relationships with Ramses, her male lover, and an older woman named Gabrielle, Noenka explores her deepest desires and liberates herself from societal expectations of women.

Astrid Roemer is the author of many novels including, On a Woman’s Madness, Off-White, DealersDochter, and more. At 19 years old, Astrid emigrated from Suriname to the Netherlands. Astrid won the P.C. Hooft Award in 2016 and the Dutch Literature Prize in 2021. Originally published in Dutch in 1982, On a Woman’s Madness was translated into English by Lucy Scott and shortlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2023. On a Woman’s Madness was recently longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025.