Courtesy of Alison Pelegrin
Jessica Kinnison, Stacey Balkun, Kelly Harris-DeBerry, Christopher Romaguera, Alison Pelegrin, Mona Lisa Saloy, Megan Holt at the Captive State: Louisiana and the Making of Mass Incarceration exhibit at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
On a fundamental level, reading creates access—and with access, opportunity.
“A community’s literacy rate is tied to its overall health,” said Dr. Megan Holt, executive director for One Book One New Orleans (OBONO). “Once you have a high literacy rate, you have a low crime rate, a low poverty rate, a low incarceration rate, better healthcare outcomes—you also have an increased likelihood of citizens participating in the democratic process. So literature and literacy are literally tied to our freedom in a very real way.”
This symbiotic relationship between literacy and social justice is at the heart of a new partnership between OBONO and Alison Pelegrin, Writer-in-Residence at Southeastern Louisiana University and former Louisiana Poet Laureate. During her tenure as poet laureate, Pelegrin founded the Lifelines Poetry Project to bring poetry into corrections facilities across the state. Around the same time, Holt established a book club inside Orleans Parish Justice Center allowing local authors to visit the incarcerated. Once the two met, they hit it off—and started making plans.
Their collaboration led them, first, to visit the Historic New Orleans Collection’s exhibition, Captive State: Louisiana and the Making of Mass Incarceration, which explored the long history of the state’s reliance on incarceration to fuel its economy. Pelegrin invited poets to view the exhibition and respond to its contents in verse. Through Holt’s sponsorship, the works then debuted at OBONO’s annual Words & Music Literary Festival in November 2024. But they had more ideas to explore.
[Read more about Pelegrin's Lifelines Poetry Project, here.]
“My position as Louisiana Poet Laureate ended in August, but it was very clear to me that I had zero intention of not visiting the carceral facilities anymore,” Pelegrin said. “I was looking for ways to continue that work.”
The resultant Big Read project, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, will bring poets featured in a recently published poetry anthology to jails and prisons across Louisiana. Once inside these incarceration facilities, the poets who contributed to You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World, which was edited by Ada Limón, will write about, read from, and discuss the anthology’s overarching theme of changing landscapes that shape us. Then, they will reach beyond the bars, participating in several free, public events in New Orleans, creating a shared literary experience to bridge two communities normally cut off from each other.
“When you are incarcerated, you are completely isolated. People are speaking for you,” Pelegrin said. Amid the disruption and loneliness of imprisonment, it can be profoundly impactful having “a space on the page where your heart and your mind can kind of be free to articulate whatever’s going around in there.”
“It is so critical that we see one another as human beings, and we do what we can to uplift each other. The idea of infusing literature and literacy with social justice is at the forefront of what I do. It’s about giving out books, but really, it’s about empowering folks to find their voice, and use it.” — Dr. Megan Holt, executive director for One Book One New Orleans
Holts’s commitment to improving literacy and fostering literary connections has real-world implications. Picking up the right book can be transformative; a pathway to a new career, a helping hand, a window into someone else’s emotional journey.
“It is so critical that we see one another as human beings, and we do what we can to uplift each other,” she said. “The idea of infusing literature and literacy with social justice is at the forefront of what I do. It’s about giving out books, but really, it’s about empowering folks to find their voice, and use it.”
This new partnership will be given a platform on November 22 at this year’s Words & Music Literary Festival. At the Andre Cailloux Center for Performing Arts and Cultural Justice in New Orleans, Pelegrin will join You Are Here contributors for a discussion of the anthology and their literary experiences with incarcerated individuals.
Learn more at wordsandmusic.org and onebookonenola.org.
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