
Media Contact
Jennifer Ellen French
Public Relations Manager
Andrew Young School of Policy Studies
[email protected]
ATLANTA — The inaugural issue of Beyond Bars: A Journal of Literature and Art is now available. The literary journal gives voice to people who have been incarcerated, providing them with new opportunities to express themselves creatively as co-editors, artists and contributors. Funded with a Mellon Foundation grant, the project is led by faculty at Georgia State and Emory universities.
“The point is not what our contributors and editors or even any of us have done in the past,” Principal Investigator Beth Gylys writes in her introduction to the journal. “The point is who they are and who they aspire to become — what they think about and read, their histories, their sadnesses, what and how and who they love. Beyond Bars, we hope, inspires those both in and out of prison to find humanity in each other, to understand that none of us ought to be defined by our worst choices or deepest regrets.”
Beyond Bars is a collaboration among Georgia State students and professors, incarcerated writers at Phillips State Prison in Gwinnett County and the nonprofit organization Common Good Atlanta. Established in 2023, it is led by Gylys, a Georgia State Distinguished University Professor who teaches English and creative writing, along with co-investigators Elizabeth Beck, a professor of social work, and Megan Sexton, an assistant professor of English and editor of the university’s Five Points: A Journal of Literature & Art. They are joined by Sarah Higinbotham, an assistant professor of English at Emory University’s Oxford College.
Additionally, Georgia State Ph.D. students Nellie Cox, Emily Lake Hansen, Kiyanna Hill and James A. Jordan worked as editors alongside three Phillips State editors — Declaration, R.C. and Shane Erich — to vet and compile the high-quality journal from the material they received.
“Even if the worst of what we have done has driven us for a long time, I believe we have the capacity to change, to learn kindness,” Gylys writes. As an example, she points to a lesson Erich shared in coming out of the fog of grief with the help of a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye. Nye responds to his essay with her own, “I’m Glad It Found You.”
Beyond Bars will be published annually and is available for subscription. To learn more, go to the Beyond Bars website at https://beyondbars.gsu.edu/.