Pittsburgh Prison Book Project

We've got a new volunteer opportunity! Starting to host special volunteer sessions to shelf books and help do some TLC in the space. First one is this Sunday 1-4pm!

PPBP Shelving and Clean Up Day SignUp.com makes it easy to coordinate school events & classroom activities, fundraisers, snack schedules, potlucks & more!

While it's so sad that Pittsburgh Technical College has closed they allowed us to go through their library so their books could have a new life. So many trade and business books plus a ton of other popular genres. We are so grateful! They still have a TON of books on their shelves and are trying to find them homes next week. PM us for their contact info if you are interested!

Thanks to everyone who purchased a book during our indie book store match week! We raised $1.8k and got 87 fantastic books! Lots of them are already in the mail to folks inside!

Our business shelf is so empty! So Sad! But wait - there's good news! Our Match is still live! Buy a business book form our bookshop wishlist https://tinyurl.com/2mj97k4k or stop at White Whale Books & Coffee or City of Asylum until May 14th and your purchase will be DOUBLED! Help us fill up our business section - one of the most requested genres!

Saturday is Independent Book Store Day!!! One of our favorite days of the year!

To celebrate this great day, a generous donor is matching all books purchased for PPBP at City of Asylum and White Whale Books & Coffee from Saturday April 27th through May 14th This is a great opportunity for our supporters to DOUBLE their impact and help us get books we need! As anyone who has been to a packing session probably knows there's a lot of genres that are super popular but we don't usually have in stock.

There are two different ways to support:
1. Purchase a book off our bookshop.org wishlist. This will get mailed directly to us and we'll get notified of the purchase. Easy peasy. Wishlist - https://tinyurl.com/2mj97k4k

2. In Person at White Whale Books or City of Asylums Book Store!
Stop by White Whale Books in Bloomfield or City of Asylum in the North Shore and purchase a book in person. We have a dedicated shelf with books we need at both locations but you can also pick any book! Saturday is actually the LAUNCH of our shelf at City of Asylum. At checkout just let them know it's for PPBP and they'll hold onto it and get it to us!

Both of these stores have awesome events going on all day Saturday so make a trip in person and celebrate our love of books!
City of Asylum details - https://www.facebook.com/cityofasylumpittsburgh/

Thanks everyone for your support and hope to see you soon!

Pittsburgh Prison Book Project Wish List Bookshop.org Custom Registry

We hope to see you Saturday night!

Send a message to learn more

March Volunteering Sessions are live!

Pgh Prison Book Project Packing Session SignUp.com makes it easy to coordinate school events & classroom activities, fundraisers, snack schedules, potlucks & more!

Do you live in the South Hills and looking for ways you can support us beyond coming to packing sessions? We need folks to help collect books from libraries, book stores and other partners in the South Hills and get them to our space in Hazelwood!

Reach out directly or sign up here:

South Hills PPBP Book Collectors! SignUp.com makes it easy to coordinate school events & classroom activities, fundraisers, snack schedules, potlucks & more!

Sign ups for January packing sessions are up - https://signup.com/go/ozLRPmW

We're encouraging folks in 2024 to limit their initial sign up for volunteering spots to one session a month. We're lucky to have an incredible network of volunteers who are interested in supporting PPBP but with limited capacity in the number of sessions we can host every month, many people are finding the sessions filled when they go to volunteer. Please leave space for other folks who might not be able to see this email immediately to sign up and feel free to check back in later.

Some people have been complaining about the plastic bag ban but we're loving it! As you get more and more paper bags out in the world make sure you're saving them for us! You can also be a paper bag super star by cutting them up before dropping them off!

Packing sessions are held in the Spartan Center in Hazelwood, at 134 E. Elizabeth St 15207. We are on the 2nd floor, and unfortunately our building does not have an elevator. Please let me know if you have questions about accessibility (or anything else).

Pgh Prison Book Project Packing Session SignUp.com makes it easy to coordinate school events & classroom activities, fundraisers, snack schedules, potlucks & more!

IT'S TIME! The clock has struck 10pm and our quest to win the "Night Owl" Prize of $1,500 through Give Big Pittsburgh has is ON!

We're so thankful to the donors who have raised us $1k so far but we're hoping we can hit our goal of $3k and win the Night Owl Prize in the next 2 hours! If you haven't donated yet hopefully you can do so before the clock strikes midnight and it's just a normal Wednesday.

Donate here:

Support Pittsburgh Prison Book Project | Give Big Pittsburgh I’m ready to support Pittsburgh Prison Book Project on November 28, 2023 during Give Big Pittsburgh. Learn more about Pittsburgh Prison Book Project and all the other organizations participating in Give Big Pittsburgh.

Help spread the joy of reading and knowledge on Giving Tuesday! We want to win the "Night Owl" prize -$1,500 to the org with the most donations between 10pm and midnight on gets it. What better way to honor Hazel, our lovely owl mascot! https://www.givebigpittsburgh.com/organizations/pghprisonbookproject

Incredible recording of a recent panel on censorship and banning of Manga books in prisons!

Dear Readers Beyond Bars Cargo

It's and a generous donor is offering a match on all books purchased for PPBP at White Whale Books & Coffee or on our Bookshop.org wishlist until the end of the month. These are books that usually don't get donated but are extremely popular and important for people on the inside. We want to ensure we're sending the books people actually want and need, so help us get DOUBLE the amount of books right now!

https://bookshop.org/wishlists/9269868214edb1b1ef1bf4c30dd9b3dbe1e6c45e

Pittsburgh Prison Book Project Wish List Bookshop.org Custom Registry

K. Schaeffer is one of our readers and just had his article about the difficulties he has with the new PA DOC book system and censorship. Delays, lost and damaged books and difficult grievance procedures continue to make it difficult for people inside SCIs to get books.

Misadventures in Mail Censorship | K. Robert Schaeffer | INQUEST An incarcerated writer’s grievances against a sad new normal of censorship and mail obstruction in a Pennsylvania prison.

Protest Prime Day ✅
Support Indie Book Stores ✅
Awesome book to someone in prison ✅
Hit up our bookshop wishlist today and tomorrow and accomplish all three!
https://bookshop.org/wishlists/9269868214edb1b1ef1bf4c30dd9b3dbe1e6c45e

Honored to speak with The Comics Journal
about the popularity of comics, trends we notice, censorship from institutions and which super heros are the favorite!

www.tcj.com

This was our most successful Indie Book Store Day Match ever! We received 70 books which will be matched for $1,823! Thank you SO much to everyone who supported us this past week and bought a book for someone in prison! We can't wait to send them all out. And thanks to White Whale Books & Coffee for hosting our shelf which gets us so many great books!

Thank you to everyone who has purchased books during the indie book match so far. Did you miss your chance got get your book doubled?!? We still have today and Monday for purchases get matched! Check out our bookshop wishlist https://tinyurl.com/2mj97k4k or stop by White Whale Books & Coffee and buy a book(for someone in prison. (and a latte for yourself!)

Independent Bookstore Day might be over but our match is still going on through Sunday! Purchase a book for someone in prison from White Whale Books & Coffee or from our bookshop wishlist https://tinyurl.com/2mj97k4k and a generous donor will match the value of the book!

Happy Independent Book Store Day!

Three reasons we love local bookstores:
They cultivate a collection of handpicked books, new and old.
They bring communities together through a shared love of reading.
They support nonprofits like us!

Now through May 8th when you purchase a book for PPBP at White Whale Books & Coffee or from our bookshop.org wishlist your purchase gets matched! We get double the books!

What better way to celebrate independent bookstore day than supporting your local book store and PPBP!

Bookshop.org Wishlist : https://tinyurl.com/2mj97k4k

Celebrate Independent Book Store Day with PPBP and WWhite Whale Books & Coffee
A generous donor is matching all books purchased for us at WW and on our bookshop.org wishlist https://tinyurl.com/2mj97k4k from April 28th through May 8th!

Don't miss your chance to help us get some high-in-demand books people are requesting!

April volunteer sessions are now live! Lots of opportunities to come out and pack this month! https://signup.com/go/ozLRPmW

A huge thank you to Games Unlimited for stocking our RPG section with some shiny new titles! If you’re unfamiliar with RPG, it stands for “Role Playing Game” (think Dungeons & Dragons). Players create their own character and work with their party to embark on adventures, fight battles, and solve problems.

RPG books are a popular request here at PPBP! We’re excited to bring some joy, competition, and creativity to people experiencing incarceration across Pennsylvania.

Oh no! We're all out of our science text books! These are super popular requests but our shelves our empty. ☹️ Physics, Chemistry, Biology are the most popular but we also need things like geography, ecology, etc. Hit us up if you can help fill our shelves!

February has come and gone. How are your New Year’s Resolutions going?

At PPBP, our resolution this year is to increase the relevancy of the books we send out. This means keeping a stock of the hard-to-come-by books that fly off our shelves, including:
🖍️Coloring books
⚖️Law Dictionaries
💡How-To books
🌎Almanacs
🧮Puzzle books
If you own any of these books and they’re gathering dust in your possession, donate them to us at the Spartan Community Center of Hazelwood! Someone experiencing incarceration will appreciate it.

We're super excited about this partnership with Black Lotus Pizza! RPG and DnD manuals are a HUGE request but we usually don't have any in stock. BLP is a perfect partner to help us get these books. If you haven't been there you have to stop by! Great Pizza and Sammies plus an amazing selection of board games!

“Threat to the order and security of the institution" is a BS catch all term that prisons use to ban whatever they want - foreign language, DnD, Grant Writing for Dummies....

We saw at ACJ that "security threat" was used to ban YA fantasy books, a veteran entrepreneurship book and more. When held accountable and forced to review these decisions ACJ staff revised the bans. If the public isn't keeping an eye on prisons, they do whatever they want.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy7bdq/michigan-is-banning-inmates-from-reading-totally-normal-books

Michigan is Banning Inmates From Reading Totally Normal Books The state's prisons have banned almost 1,000 titles, claiming over half of them pose a “threat to the order and security of the institution.”

We're honored to be selected as 's "Person" of the year in literature! Thank you to all our incredible volunteers and donors who make this possible.

Wishing cheer and warmth this holiday season for the folks inside and all of you. Hoping we all have a good book to read on the longest night of the year.

https://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/prison-books-project-pittsburghs-people-of-the-year-2022-in-literature/Content?oid=22987248

Prison Books Project: Pittsburgh's People of the Year 2022 in Literature | Pittsburgh City Paper Pittsburgh Prison Book Project has been sending books to prisoners for over 20 years. Now, they’re our pick for People of the Year’s Literature category.

It was so exciting being able to send three books that fit exactly what Alise was asking for! Vampires, Magic and Paranormal are usually not in stock - these are all titles we recently purchased wholesale because of our great donors.

Image Description:
Three books on a table: "The Unidentified : Mythical Monsters, Alien Enounters..." "The Book of Spells" "The Mammoth Book of Dracula"
I'm writing to you for books as i'm an avid reader and love to read. My genres are vampires, manga, witches, anime, paranormal, aliens / supernatural, haunted places magic.