The BleakHouse Fellowship is given to someone whose writing or scholarship best exemplifies the press’s mission to shed a humane light on those entangled in the criminal justice system. Funding is provided by the press.
kat bodrie
2024
Our BleakHouse fellow for 2024 is Kat Bodrie, a humanitarian, freelance editor, published poet, and lifelong learner. She has worked with incarcerated writers since 2021, when she met George Wilkerson through a book he co-authored. After learning of the injustices of the carceral system, she has dedicated herself to encouraging and challenging prison writers on their poetry and prose. Kat lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, about two hours away from Central Prison, where she visits George a few times each year. Together, they have collaborated on several books, including Interface and two editions of Bone Orchard for BleakHouse Publishing. They tapped their interest in therapy and psychology to write Digging Deep: Prompts for Self-Discovery, Healing, and Transformation, published by the Human Kindness Foundation in December 2024. (Available to prisoners on the Edovo app.) Kat has a background in magazine editing, features writing, and teaching and tutoring at the community college level. Kat and George are co-editors of bramble online, a literary magazine. Read their writing at katbodrie.com.
george t. wilkerson
2023
Our BleakHouse fellow for 2023 is George T. Wilkerson, a self-taught, award-winning poet, writer, editor, and artist who has been incarcerated on North Carolina’s Death Row since 2006. His poetry has appeared in Poetry, Litmosphere, Bayou Magazine, The Prison Journalism Project, and elsewhere. His essays have appeared in The Sun, Vice, The Marshall Project, and others. He regularly writes devotionals for The Upper Room. His poetry collection Interface won BleakHouse’s Victor Hassine Memorial Scholarship in 2022. He is a co-author of Bone Orchard: Reflections on Life under Sentence of Death, also published by BleakHouse; a co-author of Inside: Voices from Death Row, published by Scuppernong Editions; a co-author of Beneath Our Numbers, published by Walk In Those Shoes; editor of the anthology You’ll Be Smarter than Us; and editor of the national newsletter Compassion. A four-time PEN award winner, George loves playing volleyball, listening to 90s hip-hop, and eating Fruity Pebbles. Read his writing at katbodrie.com/georgewilkerson.
Lyle c. may
2022
Our BleakHouse fellow for 2022 is Lyle C. May, a prison journalist, abolitionist, Ohio University alum and member of the Alpha Sigma Lambda Honor Society. While he pursues every legal avenue to overturn his wrongful conviction and death sentence, Lyle advocates for greater access to higher education in prison. His fight is that of millions and while the opposition is strong, his desire for equal justice is stronger. To read more of Lyle’s writing visit ScalawagMagazine.org.
Brittany Ripper
2021
Our BleakHouse Fellow for 2021 is Brittany Ripper, J.D., a third-year doctoral student in the Justice, Law and Criminology Department at American University. Her research focuses on juvenile life without parole, women’s reentry, and reentry of individuals sentenced to life. Ripper’s background gives her rich insight into the criminal legal system, as she has seen family members go in and out of the system and has practiced as a defense attorney. Her article with Robert Johnson examining alternatives to de facto life sentences was published in the Journal of Criminal Justice and Law. She has a column on the BleakHouse Publishing website about current events in the field.
Esther Matthews
2019-2020
Our BleakHouse Fellow for academic year 2019-2020 is Esther Matthews, a doctoral student in the Justice, Law and Criminology department at American University. Her work focuses on punishment, incarceration, and reentry. She has been published in the Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, and she has a book chapter on prison violence scheduled for publication in the latest edition of the Routledge Handbook on American Prisons. She has conducted ethnographic investigations of prison life, including several prison solitary confinement units, as well as reentry programs designed to assist prisoners as they prepare for their return to the free community. Matthews uses her passion for social justice and her academic training to provide a rich, authentic, and humane understanding of crime and punishment.
CASEY CHIAPPETTA
2016-2017 & 2018-2019
The BleakHouse Fellowship is the flagship award of BleakHouse Publishing. It is given to the American University student whose scholarship best exemplifies the commitment of the press to “shine a humane light on the nether world of penal institutions, as well as other repressive settings, practices, and beliefs.” Casey Chiappetta is a senior honors student at American University majoring in sociology. This last year, she studied social policy at the London School of Economics through the General Course program. In the summer of 2014, she lived in Israel-Palestine during the escalation and up to the most recent offensive on Gaza, working as an advocate for dialogue and human rights. She spent three weeks there again this summer, attending seminars and visiting friends. Her experience both working in and with conflict resolution strengthened her resolve to work for social justice, currently in the context of domestic criminal justice. She is passionate about the study of intergroup dynamics, particularly with regard to power relations. She is editor-in-chief of American University’s student-run political magazine, AWOL, where she has worked for the past three years. For the press, she coordinates web posts, and is a literary and graphics editor for BleakHouse Review.
TATIANA LAING
2015-2016
Our BleakHouse Fellow for academic year 2015-16 is Tatiana Laing, an honors student in the School of Public Affairs at American University. Since arriving in Washington DC in the fall of 2012, she has become involved with a number of organizations that work to reform the criminal justice system. Laing was a key organizer of “The Darkening,” a demonstration undertaken on the AU campus in the spring of 2015 to protest police violence, a problem that disproportionately affects minorities, a group that includes Laing. “Being of Jamaican decent, I’ve had to face many of the institutionalized problems that all ethnic minorities face. But facing those problems has empowered me to work to change the institutions by which this nation is governed.” Laing hopes to practice law and continue to be an advocate for racial justice and criminal justice reform in the United States.
ALEXA MARIE KELLY
2014-2015
Our BleakHouse Fellow for academic year 2014-2015 is Alexa Marie Kelly. Kelly studied public relations with minors in literature and marketing at American University. She works with Professor Johnson as BleakHouse Publishing’s Chief Editorial Officer. In this role, she encourages and evaluates writing submitted to the press and has reached out beyond the AU campus to increase submissions from prisoners and other writers. Kelly is co-editor in chief of Tacenda Literary Magazine, BleakHouse’s flagship print journal of creative prose and poetry. As BleakHouse Fellow, Kelly will create her own BleakHouse poetry collection, to be published in 2015. She will also co-lead a volunteer trip to San Francisco to explore our broken justice system. In the future, she hopes to work as a publicist and continue supporting prison reform.
