Will Anderson is a transgender/nonconforming writer, artist and musician currently incarcerated in Moose Lake, Minnesota. They are a member of Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and their prison writers collective. Their work has appeared in
Territory,
Chatham Review,
Stillpoint Magazine, and (with Sarah Snyder) in the forthcoming volume
Entangled and Empowered: Agency in Multispecies Communities. Their work and contact information are available at
linktr.ee/wma9455.
Brian Auclair is the primary gardener and landscaper for all green, common spaces at Massachusetts Correctional Institution, Norfolk. Over the last 25 years while at MCI-Norfolk, Brian has pursued and earned his GED and a Bachelor of Arts from Boston University. He is currently training service dogs for NEADS, serves as a facilitator for the cognitive introspection program Jericho Circle, and is an accomplished Toastmaster.
Kelli Bush co-directs the Sustainability in Prisons Project (SPP) and the Evergreen Liberation Education Network (ELEN) at The Evergreen State College. SPP is a partnership founded by Evergreen and the Washington State Department of Corrections to bring nature, science, and environmental education into prisons. Kelli supports a team of thirteen staff managing ecological conservation and environmental education initiatives including threatened and endangered species programs, peer-led education courses, nature, art, and culture workshops, and community-supported experiential learning. In 2023 she took on an additional co-directorship with ELEN, supporting a network of Evergreen education and reentry programs including a new bachelor's degree program in a Washington prison. Prior to joining SPP in 2010, Kelli had over 15 years of horticulture and restoration ecology experience and earned a B.A. in Agriculture Ecology from The Evergreen State College.
Cory Campbell is a student at Lewis-Clark State College in Idaho. He grew up in the Treasure Valley with two loving parents and three sisters. As a juvenile, Cory was incarcerated and has continuously tried to make the most of his situation through writing and education. While incarcerated, Cory has obtained two associates degrees and is working towards his bachelor's degree in Business and Communication Arts. He spends the majority of his time in education, working on a variety of projects and being an active member in LC State's Student Council. Aside from school, Cory enjoys beadwork, running, photography, and working on an array of media projects.
Linda Cayton is a peer support specialist and a formerly incarcerated mother in North Carolina. She works every day supporting people with substance use disorder in Alamance County where she lives. When she's not working or taking classes at Wake Technical Community College, she's spending quality time with her daughter and grandson.
Matthew DelSesto is an author, gardener, and sociologist. His research and practice have focused on urban sustainability, environmental justice, community-led design and social innovation, prisons and alternatives to incarceration, and experiential learning. In addition to more than a dozen articles, book chapters, or essays on these topics, his book Design and the Social Imagination (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022) explores historical and present-day models of community-engaged research. Matthew has taught in the Sociology Department at Boston College and at Parsons School of Design at The New School. He was a postdoctoral researcher with the Transforming Narratives of Gun Violence Initiative at Emerson College. He has also trained and practiced as a horticultural therapist, and for the last 15 years he has worked in a wide range of prison education programs including an Inside-Out Program that he founded and coordinated at Boston College.
Leanna First-Arai is a journalist, teacher and researcher intent on bringing awareness to the connections between climate breakdown and economic and racial injustice. Her reporting has appeared widely, including in The Guardian, Truthout, Undark, Southerly, MLK50, Yes! Magazine, The Food and Agriculture Reporting Network, and Sierra Magazine. Leanna is also the host and a co-producer of the Southern Environmental Law Center's award-winning podcast Broken Ground, and she is currently working on a PhD in Geography at University College Dublin, in Ireland.
Diane Follingstad, Ph.D., ABPP, is emeritus Executive Director and Women's Circle Endowed Chair of the Center for Research on Violence Against Women and emeritus Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Kentucky. She holds the diplomate in forensic psychology from the American Board of Forensic Psychology and was awarded fellow status in the Psychology and Law Division of the American Psychological Association. Her quantitative research over more than 40 years in the area of violence against women has covered issues related to intimate partner violence, physical dating violence, and factors impacting jury verdicts in cases where battered women killed a partner. Her research has led to more sophisticated measurement of psychological aggression and abuse, and she has published critiques regarding the problems of measurement in the field.
Judith Foster is Founder of H.E.R.O. Nurturing Center, a non-profit organization located in the heart of Boston, MA. She has been a community activist and organizer for over twenty years. In 2009, working with the Green Party, Judith coordinated The Re-invest in Yourself Conference at the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center in Boston. In 2022, Judy was awarded The HERO Among Us Award by the Boston Celtics and The Norfolk County Heroes Award for community building and public service. She has also been an advocate for the healing power of nature, including her support for SD.1631 'An Act Relative to Nature as a Prescription' in the Massachusetts State Legislature. She is certified by the Labor Guild and in the curriculum of ESPERE: Schools of Forgiveness and Reconciliation.
Patrick Gazeley-Romney was incarcerated at Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution (EOCI) for eight years where he was the program lead for the Beekeeping, Horticulture, Mindfulness, Greenhouse Management, and Roots of Success programs. At EOCI, Patrick was a staff writer for the ECHO Newsletter and the Secretary for the EOCI Enrichment Club. He has dedicated his time in prison to developing programming and curricula to enrich the lives of his peers. Patrick has a Bachelor's Degree from Portland State University. He looks forward to his release in 2027 at which time he plans to establish an arborist business in Portland, Oregon and continue his work with the Roots of Success program.
Morgan Godvin is an internationally recognized expert in drug policy, harm reduction, and addiction research, driven by her lived experience. Indicted for drug delivery resulting in death for her best friend's accidental overdose, she served five years in federal prison, then dedicated her life to the intersection of substance use and the criminal-legal system. As Project Director for Drug Checking Los Angeles at UCLA, she expanded fentanyl sampling and led research that identified a new contaminant, later published in JAMA. She is currently in a Global Health PhD program at UCSD and SDSU. In 2021, she founded harm reduction nonprofit Beats Overdose, partnering with Rhymesayers Entertainment to tour with hip hop artists, training thousands of fans and venue staff in overdose response. Featured in The Washington Post and Vice, she serves on Oregon's Measure 110 Oversight and Accountability Council and as Director of the Community Council for the NIDA Clinical Trials Network.
A Native American, Rima Green has experienced both foster care and incarceration. After a 30-year product development career in high-tech, Rima returned to her first love: gardening and working with individuals caught up in the correctional system. Since 2014, Rima has directed the Lettuce Grow program, which provides garden education to inmates in correctional institutions and juvenile facilities in Oregon. Since 2010, over 1,550 inmates have taken one or more Lettuce Grow classes and many have found work in the horticulture field.
Nick Hacheney is a longtime advocate for environmental and educational programs in carceral settings. He has been published in BioCycle, The Crime Report, The Appeal, The Economist's 1843 Magazine, and others. His 2009 TEDx Talk 'The Power of Sustainability' highlighted an environmental program he started in prison that has since been featured at two international environmental conferences. Most recently, he authored several chapters of curriculum for the Nevada State prison system. He has been incarcerated since 2001.
Elizabeth Hawes is a six-time national PEN America award winner in memoir, poetry, and drama, and the recipient of a Fielding A. Dawson award, three Minnesota Broadsides, and the National PEN L'Engle-Rahman Prize. She was awarded a 2019 journalist grant for the Solitary Confinement Reporting Project. Hawes has contributed to scholarly volumes including Teaching Literature and Writing in Prisons and Into Abolition: A Guidebook for Liberatory Theatre-making Practices, and has published in Harper's Bazaar, American Theatre Magazine, the Vera Institute of Justice, and Truthout.org. Her play Supernova was a winner at The Wild Project's 2022 New York Play Festival. She has been incarcerated since 2010.
Abiodun Charlotte Henderson is a community organizer and Executive Director of The Come Up Project, which features Gangstas to Growers, an agribusiness training program for formerly incarcerated young adults, and the developing Sweet Sol, a worker-owned cooperative. She has been an organizer in Southwest Atlanta for over 10 years and under her leadership, the Westview Community Garden is now community-owned. Abiodun is a board member of the Georgia Cooperative Development Center, the Collective Courage Fund, a founding member of the MAMA (Metro Atlanta Mutual Aid) Fund, and FAAM (Free Atlanta Abolition Movement). She is a native Brooklynite who represents for the Kru Tribe of Native Liberians.
David Helps is a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Southern California, where he is working on a book titled American Babel: A People's History of Global Los Angeles. David's research and writing for public audiences has appeared in The Nation, the Washington Post, and In These Times, among other outlets. His essay 'In the Rubble,' about la montaña, photography, and the Los Angeles housing crisis, appears in Writing the Golden State: The New Literary Terrain of California (Angel City Press, 2024).
Juan Hernandez is incarcerated in Washington State. He has been the lead technician for a highly acclaimed sustainability program, has worked with the University of Washington and Evergreen State College to develop curriculum on numerous topics. His writing has been published in BioCycle Magazine, and he was a co-author for a 2022 research paper on soil health in the academic journal Urban Forestry and Urban Greening. He is scheduled to be released in 2028.
Daniela Jauk-Ajamie, PhD, is an Assistant Professor for Sociology and Criminal Justice Studies at the University of Akron, Ohio. She received a Masters in Sociology from the University of Graz in Austria and completed her Ph.D. in Sociology as a Fulbright student at the University of Akron in 2013. She is a certified clinical sociologist and serves on the board of the American Association of Applied and Clinical Sociology (AACS). Her areas of research interest and teaching are gender, inequality in the criminal legal system, and qualitative methods. She co-authored the book Gardening Behind Bars: Clinical Sociology and Food Justice in Incarcerated Settings (2024, Springer), and her work has been published in Women and Criminal Justice, Sexualities, and Societies Without Borders.
William (Bill) Jett (September 21, 1962 – November 27, 2022) was a husband, brother, father, friend to many, and environmental advocate and activist. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Bill was passionate about creating sustainable communities and promoted engagement in environmental work to create safe spaces for open communication and healing. He was a devoted practitioner of meditation and mindfulness in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh. As the inaugural Fleet Manager at GrowNYC, Bill worked to develop the fleet safety program and led sustainability planning for the eventual conversion of GrowNYC's fleet to electric vehicles. From 2013 to 2020, working with the New York City Office of Recycling Outreach and Education, he helped divert over 7 million pounds of food scraps from the main waste stream into compost. Bill graduated from Bard College with a B.S. in Environmental Studies and from NYU Wagner with a Master of Urban Planning degree. He was a longtime, active supporter of the Bard Prison Initiative.
Tomas Keen is a writer from Washington State, prioritizing issues of social justice and legal reform. His work has appeared in The Crime Report, Inquest, Open Campus, the Economist's 1843 Magazine, and others. In 2010 he started serving a 20-year prison term.
Nyki Kish is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Victoria and the Associate Executive Director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies. Committed to public scholarship, systemic advocacy, and community-engaged research, she holds multiple publications and is frequently called upon as an expert on incarceration in Canada. Nyki has a rich history of commitment to addressing the impacts of incarceration, from founding Books to Bars — an Ontario-based books to prisoners' non-profit — in 2008, to her many years with Emma's Acres, a transformative justice social enterprise farm in British Columbia. Her research focuses on generating insight into life sentences in Canada and aims toward legislative change to abolish them.
Elizabeth Lara is devoted to plants, gardens, landscape history, and public horticulture, particularly as they intersect with matters of liberation. She currently works as a garden educator, Dodger Stadium tour guide (with a specialization on the botanic garden tour), a facilitator for a domestic violence intervention program, and a freelance gardener. Elizabeth received her Anthropology PhD from Deakin University in 2024. Her academic research focuses on gardens and horticultural history in current and former sites of incarceration in California. Her work 'Prison Gardens and Growing Abolition' has been published in the edited collection The Promise of Multispecies Justice (Duke University Press, 2022).
Caihong Li is the principal data analyst at the Performance Analytics Center of Excellence (PACE) at the University of Kentucky. Her research interests include methodology, psychometrics, and quantitative data analyses in social sciences. She has published 15 papers on research methodology, and scale development and validation in the fields of education, psychology, and sociology.
Frederick Livingston was born at the southern tip of the Salish Sea in Olympia, Washington. He has studied and practiced ecology, sustainable agriculture, and experiential education across the world. His work has wandered from agricultural extension in Tanzania to biointensive research in California, leading bicycle tours to international student trips, propagating native plants in prisons to building trails in national forests and beyond.
Jarid Nidal Manos, an American writer and activist, is the author of Ghetto Plainsman (2010) and the upcoming novel Her Blue Watered Streets, and founder of the non-profit organization Great Plains Restoration Council. GPRC created the Ecological Health education and intervention model, which helps youth and young adults take care of their mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health through taking care of the Earth. Blending ecological restoration and preservation with social work, this model serves as the structure for GPRC's Restoration Not Incarceration™ and Shark Therapy™ initiatives. GPRC is based in Fort Worth, Texas, with expanded operations in West Texas, Atlanta, and South Florida.
Joe McManus is a gardener who has been part of programs sponsored by the organization Garden Time. He is currently serving a life without parole sentence at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institutions.
Rebekah Mende has a MS in Food Systems & Society, a background in prison food reform research and activism, and over 10 years combined professional experience in both private and public sectors. She is dedicated to growing and maintaining the prison food reform movement as well as rehabilitation through education and opportunity. Rebekah was a Vocational Trades Instructor at Maine State Prison (MSP) from 2018 to 2024. She is appreciative to the residents of MSP for trusting her with their time, labor, and insight and contributing to an extraordinary example of gardening as a powerful agent for personal growth and healing.
Stephanie Moniz is a first generation native to Providence, Rhode Island, and a true creative with a passion for pursuing Black equity through art activism and purpose-driven vision. She is a formerly incarcerated author/illustrator, public speaker, and community building consultant. Her first published book was written and illustrated while serving a sentence at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institution in 2015, and self-published in 2018 under the pen name Charlotte Apricot. She participated in the internationally award-winning documentary film Tre Maison Dasan, which highlights part of her experience as a single mother in the criminal justice system. In 2019 Stephanie launched Steph Artivista Consulting, helping people develop skills of emotional intelligence to co-create inclusive and ethical institutions. She also serves as Training and Education Program Coordinator for Groundwork Rhode Island.
Sam Phillips, MSW, LSW, is a social worker in Akron, Ohio. Sam is involved in nonprofit community gardening and mental health therapy. Sam earned a Bachelor's degree in Education from Denison University and a Master's of Social Work from the University of Akron. Sam has worked for Let's Grow Akron since 2017 providing fresh produce for food pantries, community gardening spaces for neighbors, and horticultural therapy opportunities for all who are interested.
Dr. Raquel Pinderhughes is the Founder and Executive Director of the Roots of Success Environmental Literacy and Job Training Apprenticeship Program and a Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at San Francisco State University, where her research and teaching focus on improving quality of life for people living in underserved communities. An internationally recognized expert on green jobs and workforce development, Raquel conducted the landmark study 'Green Collar Jobs for Individuals with Barriers to Employment' and co-authored the Federal Department of Corrections' first report on 'The Greening of Corrections: Creating a Sustainable System.' Her programmatic work on preparing youth and adults who face barriers to employment for jobs in the green economy informed the Obama Administration's ARRA 'Pathways Out of Poverty' program. Her current research focuses on the impact of the Biden Administration's Justice40 Initiative.
Josie Phoenix is Special Projects Manager at Roots of Success. They worked in the foodservice and hospitality industry for over fifteen years working in almost every position from dishwasher to Director of Food Service. They are actively involved in activities and advocacy efforts to increase food and housing security, support mutual aid, and provide harm reduction services. They have worked with Food Not Bombs, Punks with Lunch, Rogers and Rosewater Soup Kitchen, Poverello House Shelter, and the Central Valley Community Food Bank. Josie holds a BA degree in Urban Studies and Planning from San Francisco State University.
Kristen Powers, Executive Director of Benevolence Farm, believes that we are more than our worst mistakes. As director of a rural reentry nonprofit, Kristen is honored to work alongside formerly incarcerated women who are creating innovative reentry programs and advocating for systemic change. It is her hope that we can learn to create communities capable of addressing harm and safety together, outside of prisons and jails. Kristen also loves the fact that she grew up on a farm and now gets to work at one.
Rachel Reeves is a doctoral candidate and research assistant in sociology at the University of Kentucky. She is the project manager for a federally funded study evaluating a domestic violence shelter's Therapeutic Horticulture program. She holds a M.A. in sociology and a B.A. in psychology and sociology from the University of Kentucky.
Claire Renzetti, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair of Sociology and the Judi Conway Patton Endowed Chair for Studies of Violence Against Women at the University of Kentucky. Her research is on gender-based violence, especially the violent victimization experiences of socially and economically marginalized women and girls. In 1995, she founded and continues to edit the peer-reviewed, international and interdisciplinary journal Violence Against Women. She is also the editor of the Gender and Justice book series for University of California Press and co-editor of the Interpersonal Violence book series for Oxford University Press. She has written or edited 26 books as well as numerous book chapters and journal articles based on her research.
Genea Richardson is a leading voice of women's re-entry. She spent 18 years incarcerated, where she facilitated healing spaces for hundreds of women inside through radical listening workshops. Less than a year after her return to her community she became a conduit for change by leading restorative justice workshops. She now heads the Gardening arm of Huma House in Los Angeles, where she is the Lead Instructor for the Huma Resilience Program, focusing on women's re-entry and reunification with their families.
Carlos Rosado is founder of Goshen Organics in New York, which focuses on 'cultivating goodness' through land stewardship, cooperative farming, and caregiving. He previously was a field engineer for a recycling company, and his organizing work has focused on making sustainable livelihoods accessible to all. Carlos is a graduate of Bard College in environmental studies, where his thesis focused on prison food.
Erika Rumbley is a Co-Founder and Director of The New Garden Society (TNGS), an organization dedicated to training incarcerated students in the art and science of plants. For over a decade, she has gardened alongside students in Greater Boston prison yards on Monday afternoons. Beyond TNGS, Erika serves as the Director of Horticulture at The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Erika is a graduate of Vassar College with an Honors BA in Environmental Studies and is the recipient of numerous fellowships including the Helen Dwight Reid Fellowship. Since her first farm apprenticeship in 2005, Erika has grown ornamentals, cut flowers, fruit and vegetables on farms in New York, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. She has also served a range of land-based non-profits as a facilitator and adult educator, including Southside Community Land Trust, Boston Natural Areas Network and The Trustees of Reservations.
Trip Finity Taylor's life is a testament to the interconnectedness of all things. From the towering strength of ancient trees to the resilient flow of rivers, nature has been his most profound teacher, instilling in him a deep respect for life's inherent value. This reverence for the natural world extends to his fellow humans, fueling a passionate commitment to justice and equity. Having experienced the transformative power of both nature and education while incarcerated, Trip now dedicates his efforts to creating opportunities for those entwined with the criminal legal system. He works tirelessly to develop and expand prison education and reentry programs, believing in the potential for rehabilitation and personal growth, mirroring the regenerative power of nature itself.
Ki'Amber Thompson is an abolitionist environmental justice educator, healing justice practitioner, multimedia artist, and PhD candidate at the University of California Santa Cruz. They are the Founder and Co-Executive Director of the Charles Roundtree Bloom Project (@crbloomproject), an outdoor healing justice program for youth impacted by criminalization, policing, and incarceration. Their work bridges abolition, decolonial, and environmental justice movements toward imagining and creating more socially and environmentally just and sustainable worlds. Ki'Amber has done social and environmental justice research, storytelling, and organizing across the globe, including in North and South America and Southeast Asia. Their work has been recognized locally and nationally, and they have received several awards, including Grist 50 Fixers and EE 30 Under 30.
Kelsey Timler is a white settler activist researcher, with a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, BC. She spent a decade as a professional cook before finding her home within academic circles that see research as a way to confront power imbalances, meet basic needs within communities, and support the visioning and dreaming of better worlds for criminalized and racialized neighbours through food, art, and community building. Kelsey lives on the unceded and occupied lands of the Halq'eméylem speaking Peoples of the Stó:lō Nations. She believes in the power of food to bring people together across differences, and the radical healing available in the mountains and rivers in her backyard.
Brendan Wilson is a sixth-generation Californian from a landscaping family. He studied Architecture at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, and after graduating, embarked upon a self-employed career in landscape design, installation, and maintenance, working with numerous collaborators and partners. He enhanced the beauty of many properties with features such as raised beds, brick and stonework, trellises, water features, and outdoor lighting. His specialties include xeriscaping, urban food gardens, composting, maximizing space for vegetable crops, and greywater systems.
Shea Zwerver drives the implementation of workforce development programs. She enjoys creating synergy and collaborating on unique and innovative projects across sectors. From 2016 to 2022, Shea served in multiple roles with Pennsylvania's Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. There, she conceptualized and coordinated a vocational and educational training program — the 'Correctional Conservation Collaboration' — at state prisons in arboriculture, forestry, and natural resource conservation. Shea hopes to continue working to bring nature to carceral settings, increase access to nature to promote prosocial behavior, and improve quality of life through equity-driven practices. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology with a minor in Landscape Studies from Smith College and a Master of Environmental Studies from the University of Pennsylvania.
