The Board of Directors
KAITLIN SHIRLEY
Kaitlin is the founder of Inside Literature. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College in Russian and French Literature. She studied Russian language at the Kathryn Davis School of Russian at Middlebury College and completed her post-baccalaureate studies at Wellesley College. She earned her MA and PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Texas at Austin.
JASON HERNANDEZ
Jason was sentenced to life without parole for a nonviolent drug offense in 1998 at the age of 21. While incarcerated Jason became a “jailhouse attorney” and began litigating on his behalf and others incarcerated. In 2011 Jason, on his own, sent a petition and letter to President Obama asking his sentenced be reduced. On December 19, 2013 Jason became one of the first to receive clemency from President Obama known as the “Obama 8.” Since his release in 2015 Jason has assisted six other individuals serving life sentences receive clemency through President Obama and has advocated for criminal justice reform and has written for and featured in The Guardian, The New York Times, MSNBC, CNN and other major media outlets. Jason is also a recipient of a Latino Justice Fellowship, Soros Justice Fellowship and awarded the Volunteer of the Year in his City by two different organizations.
Jason has recently launched his own Leadership Initiative for Latino High School Students called ATLAST (Aspiring Texas Latinos Achieving Succeeding Together); He is working with the ACLU on a national campaign to have clemency utilized on a mass scale; And he recently released a book that teaches prisoners and families how to do clemency petitions called Get Clemency Now and he is currently working on his memoir which will be released through One World Publishing this Summer.
MARILEE RANSOM
Marilee earned a PhD in Early Childhood Education from the University of Alabama as well as a J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law. She has diverse experience in both law and education including work as a nonprofit attorney, a language arts teacher, and a university instructor.
AMY VIDOR
Raised in northern California, Amy earned bachelor’s degrees in English and French at the University of Southern California and a master’s degree in History and Literature at Columbia University. She earned her PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at Austin.
The Advisory Board
RICHARD REDDICK
Richard J. Reddick, Ed.D. (Rich) is the associate dean for equity, community engagement, and outreach in the College of Education at UT Austin, where he also is professor of educational leadership and policy. He also holds appointments in Plan II Honors, Black Studies, and serves as co-chair of the Council for Racial and Ethnic Equity and Diversity (CREED). He is also a member of the Distinguished Service Academy. In addition, Rich serves as the faculty co-chair of the Institute for Educational Management (IEM) at Harvard University. An educational researcher focused on issues pertaining to equity in higher education and across the P-16 continuum, specifically, Rich qualitatively examines the phenomena of cultural taxation (the uncompensated, unrewarded diversity labor that BIPOC faculty, students, and staff engage in to advance institutional diversity goals), mentoring across race and gender, and how BIPOC faculty, staff, and students experience historically White institutions.
DARWIN HAMILTON
Darwin Hamilton serves as co-chair of the Board of Directors with Grassroots Leadership. He’s an alumni of Leadership Austin’s Essential Class of 2018 and JustLeadership USA 2018 cohorts. He serves on the executive committee of the Austin/Travis County Re-entry Roundtable and its partner organization, the Reentry Advocacy Project (RAP). His personal mission is to change criminal justice policies and practices and reduce the stigma of formerly incarcerated people. He does this through his own example, and through his strategic, inspiring, and powerful story-telling. Darwin recently self-published his memoir 25 Years Later: A Sentence from Crime to Redemption, Resilience, Advocacy and Leadership.
TOBI JACOBI
Tobi is Professor of English and director of the University Composition Program and the Community Literacy Center at Colorado State University. She coordinates the SpeakOut! Writing Workshop Program for community writers working from spaces of confinement and recovery. Her scholarship on prison literacy and community writing appears in journals such as Reflections, Community Literacy Journal, The Journal of Correctional Education, Feminist Formations, and Radical Teacher and in edited collections. Her co-edited book Women, Writing, and Prison came out in 2014, and she is currently working on a collaborative literacy remix project that blends contemporary pedagogy with archival prison texts.
LINDSEY PARKER
Attending Howard University as a recipient of their full tuition Laureate Scholarship, Lindsey earned her B.A. in Russian Literature and Language with a minor in Political Science in 2013. Lindsey also studied Russian language at the Kathryn Davis School of Russian at Middlebury College. She subsequently earned her J.D from Howard University School of Law in 2018. After taking some time away from the legal field, she sat for and passed the Maryland Bar exam in October of 2020.
ANNA PLEMONS
Anna Plemons is the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Washington State University Tri-Cities and a faculty member in the Digital Technology and Culture program. She also teaches creative non-fiction in the California prison system and has written about relational methodologies for the prison classroom in Beyond Progress in the Prison Classroom: Options and Opportunities (2019).
JOE LOCKARD
Joe Lockard is an associate professor of English at Arizona State University. He has taught weekly poetry workshops in Arizona prisons since 2009 and established ASU’s prison education program in 2010. He has published extensively on prison literature and prison education issues.
KATY RYAN
Katy Ryan is Professor of English and an Eberly Family Professor of Outstanding Teaching at West Virginia University. Her research focuses on the history and literature of imprisonment in the United States. In 2004, she founded the Appalachian Prison Book Project, a nonprofit that sends free books to people imprisoned in six states, creates prison book clubs, and provides tuition support for credit-bearing college classes for incarcerated adults.
Staff and Featured Volunteers
SARAH POOLEY
Sarah earned her B.A. in Political Science and Master of Public Policy from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. She has over a decade of experience managing non-profit programs and conducting community outreach with organizations in the New York Metropolitan Area. Sarah recently completed a Certificate in Fundraising Leadership from the Pennsylvania State University. Sarah is Inside Literature’s Community Engagement Director.
EMILY HARRING
Emily is a PhD candidate in the English Department. She studies Afro-Caribbean folklore––particularly, how contemporary Jamaican and Haitian works represent colonial trauma through folkloric figures.
STEPHANIE BRYNES
Stephanie earned her PhD at the University of Texas at Austin in 2020 where she studied 20th-century French literature. She received her M.A. in French at the same university in 2016, and a B.A. in French and in English from the State University of New York at New Paltz in 2013. Stephanie volunteers with Inside Literature running our social media accounts and working on marketing our organization.
VANESSA JIMENEZ
Vanessa earned her B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin. She is planning to pursue graduate studies in Education. This is her third year working with Education related nonprofit organizations and as an intern for Inside Literature she worked on grant applications and curriculum development. She is also a volunteer assistant instructor for our Spanish language literature classes. As a first generation university student, her research is focused on finding and developing new ways of teaching that can help underserved students to learn better and empower them to pursue higher education.
JENNIFER SAPIO
Dr. Jennifer Sapio is a teacher, creative nonfiction writer, and poet from Austin, Texas. Her family has lived for generations in the heat and drought of the Central part of the state. Jennifer was the eldest child in a sprawling family, and she soon found a comfortable role as teacher of the younger ones. She has always loved learning, reading, and writing, passions which carried her through a Bachelor’s degree from Barnard College, the women’s college at Columbia University, as well as a PhD at the University of Texas.
One of Dr. Sapio’s greatest privileges has been to serve her students in the classroom as a teacher for the past fourteen years. Currently, she is an Adjunct Associate Professor of English and Journalism at Austin Community College. She has also held teaching positions at the University of Texas and several high schools in the Austin area. She also models for her students that learning is a life-long endeavor, as she has recently matriculated at New York University for a Master of Fine Arts degree in the Creative Writing Program.
Dr. Sapio has written academic and scholarly work, as well as creative nonfiction and poetry. She was recently shortlisted for the Doug Draime Prize for Poetry (2020), and she was a semifinalist in the Writer’s Advice flash memoir contest (2019). You can see her publications at Medium (where she is a Top Writer in Education), The Write Launch, Sonder Midwest, Raw Art Review, Chattahoochee Review, jennisapio.com, and elsewhere.
In addition to her creative literary practice and teaching, Dr. Sapio volunteers with the Inside Literature program at the Travis County Correctional Complex, as well as for the Girls Empowerment Network. She is deeply committed to promoting racial justice, gender equality, and indigenous rights. She is a proud mother of two children and too many plants to count. If she’s not reading, listening to music or a wind chime, then she’s surely in the garden.
MICHAEL MELECK
Michael earned his B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College in History and Creative Writing. He is currently in software development and volunteers his skillset with Inside Literature developing an app for instructors to use to keep track of classes metrics.
NINA CLINE
A Texas native, Nina earned her B.A. at the University of Texas at Arlington and her M.A. at the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently a PhD student in the Program in Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a volunteer instructor and teaches Inside Literature courses in both English and Spanish.
AUBREY PLOURDE
Aubrey earned her PhD in English Literature from the University of Texas at Austin with a focus on Victorian literature and secularism in the United States. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Lynchburg in the Department of English. Aubrey volunteers with her expertise in program development and instructor training.