“At USC, we have an obligation to leverage our resources, our time, our expertise, our money [and] our critical thinking skills towards the community,” said professor Rowan Bayne, the faculty director of Dornsife’s Prison Education Project’s “Readers’ Circle” program and lecturer in the Writing Program.

The Readers’ Circle is a program that pairs USC students and faculty volunteers with incarcerated writers who want feedback on their writing, whether creative, non-fiction or poetry. Founded in 2021 by USC alum Keziah Poole, the program has grown into a writing network connecting universities and prisons nationwide to advocate for education access and creative expression in prisons.

To date, the program has processed over 2,800 manuscripts, involved 760 volunteers and worked with approximately 105 facilities across the country from over 30 states.

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Despite its expanding reach, the work of the Readers’ Circle’s local staff and volunteers is what keeps the program running and continues to grow with enthusiasm from students.

“It’s so remarkable to see how much uptake and excitement there’s been on campus around getting involved with the program,” Bayne said.

The program also offers a two-unit writing workshop titled “Inside Out, Outside In,” which is offered in conjunction with the Prison Education Project and taught by Bayne as well as PEP Director Nick De Dominic.

Michelle Reilly, a senior majoring in comparative literature as well as mathematics, first became involved in the Readers’ Circle after taking the class, and she continues to support the program as a student worker, assistant-teaching an Introduction to Narrative course at the California Institute for Women on Saturday mornings.

“The work they produce is astonishing,” Reilly said. “The system does not want members of these communities to be in conversation with one another. They want homogeneity. I think prisons present a deceptive homogeneity, and getting to see that despite all of these barriers to connections … how impacted both people are in the process and offering themselves through narrative has been really touching.”

Outside of teaching, Reilly works on processing manuscripts, clearing identification information and allocating works to editors who have signed up to edit for a particular week. Once edits are completed, Reilly prepares the finished documents and sends them back to the original writers.

“Getting uprooted from my traditional [classes] and placed in this very human community made me think about whose voices we are hearing and why,” Reilly said.

Reilly found that the lack of mention of prisons in higher education stood out as one of the most impactful aspects of the course.

“I just remember how much I looked forward to that course every week. It was probably the most meaningful experience I’ve had at USC,” Reilly said. “It was a class unlike any other class, where people are gathered in a circle … tapping into their own worlds of great sorrow, hope, humor, to collaborate on an anthology together.”

Chloe DerGarabedian, a student worker for the Readers’ Circle and a senior majoring in environmental studies as well as non-governmental organizations and social change, has been involved in the program since her freshman year. Now, as an administrative assistant for the program, she works primarily with communication between volunteers and the authors sending in their written works.

“The opportunity to read works from such a disenfranchised group that [we] rarely get to read from seemed like a good opportunity,” DerGarabedian said.

DerGarabedian also teaches the Introduction to Narrative Course and initially became involved because of the uniqueness of the program and her love for reading.

The program not only allows authors to submit creative works, but any unique written work they wish to share.

“I remember there was one book I came across where it was like a recipe book. And I really love cooking, so that was cool. It was like different recipes that [the author] would make in prison. He got a bunch of different submissions from his friends,” DerGarabedian said.

Reilly and DerGarabedian are just two of the many students and volunteers impacted by the mission of the Readers’ Circle. Bayne, who oversees the student staff and works on new partnerships with other campuses along with speaking engagements, emphasizes the importance of giving writers in prison the opportunity to have their voices heard.

“Prison facilities in this country are just brimming with people wanting to tell their stories, memoirs [and] autobiographies,” he said. “It’s also an outlet for creative expression in a place where those outlets can be hard to find.”

In addition to the Readers’ Circle’s impact to date, there is still room to expand and resources needed for its mission to reach more prisons and writers. Lack of funding and volunteers to handle the piles of manuscripts and amounts of edit requests they receive limits expansion efforts.

“The staff is definitely a bit more overwhelmed. All of the staff we have are so overworked because we all find this mission really important, as we are so dedicated to making sure it continues well, even without the resources that perhaps we need.” DerGarabedian said. “[USC] doesn’t necessarily provide us with a ton of funding, and by that I mean any funding.”

Reilly shares similar sentiments, agreeing that the program simply does not have enough volunteers to handle the demand and that even though the program is housed within Dornsife, “there are excellent opportunities that just don’t receive enough publicity or attention.”

Bayne holds optimism for the program’s expansion, as he sees great potential in the growth of partnerships with universities across the country, as the program “is a model that can be replicated elsewhere.”

“All that’s holding us back in terms of achieving that growth is to have the funding we would need to grow,” Bayne said.

Despite its challenges, the Readers’ Circle has grown to have an incredible impact, helping to bridge the gap between USC and incarcerated communities and placing an emphasis on the message of education being a human right.

“The beauty of our program is that it offers a way for us to directly contribute or get involved with a complex issue in a way that affirms humanity,” Reilly said. “I think that’s an opportunity for USC to look within and beyond itself.”