David Coogan

Welcome! I am an English professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who left campus one day to teach a writing class at the Richmond City Jail. That led to a book written with the men in the class: Writing Our Way Out: Memoirs from Jail, and a sequel, After Jail, Before Freedom. Seeing people struggle through the criminal justice system inspired me to dig into its history, which led to the Cambridge Companion to American Prison Writing and Mass Incarceration. Making books also led me to make Open Minds, a program that brings college students into the jail to take courses in the Humanities with incarcerated people, and Write Your Way Out: A Criminal Justice Diversion Program that enables low-level offenders come to the university and to take a therapeutic writing class with college students. Everyone learns more when we incarcerate less.