Honoring Our Artists and Our Roots
Celebrating the writers and artists who remind us of the power of liberation and truth-telling.
Welcome to Empowerment Ave! Learn more about our history, partnerships, and past published work here. Subscribe to the newsletter here.
EA Community,
We have an opportunity to support one of the newest additions to the EA family. EA artist Markus Xcells is featured in the Under One Roof exhibit at Nashville’s Gordon Jewish Community Center. This annual exhibit celebrates Sukkot, the Jewish holiday that honors the fall harvest. This year’s theme is “Kavod,” a Hebrew word that translates to honor and respect.
Markus chose to display his painting Universal because it speaks to the raising of consciousness and reaching a level of honor and respect for the Godlike state within all of us.
At EA, we believe in the power of art and its healing impact. There’s something powerful about cross-cultural collaboration happening in real time, especially in a moment when dominant narratives and headlines try to keep us divided.
If you are in the Nashville area, check out Markus’ work and show him some love.
Where: Gordon Jewish Community Center
801 Percy Warner Blvd.
Nashville, TN 37205
When: October 6, 2025 — October 2026
We also want to uplift another EA win: The 2025 Sheridan Prize for Art winners were announced on November 26, and we’re excited to share that EA artist Mark “Stan-Bey” Stanley received an honorable mention for his painting A Sister, Mother, Wife, Daughter: A Study of Prayer. Congratulations, Stan-Bey!
And though Giving Tuesday has passed, if you feel moved to support our work, you can still do so here. As always, we’re grateful for every form of support from our community—both inside and outside the walls.
Happy holidays to everyone who supports, organizes, collaborates, leads, and inspires what makes EA, EA.
Empowerment Ave News amplifies the work of incarcerated writers, filmmakers and artists. Subscribe to receive new posts and support the collective.
Artist Spotlight: Jennifer Rhodes
The final artist in our pool of new onboards is Jennifer Rhodes from Pennsylvania. We were fortunate to stumble upon Jennifer’s artwork online and recruited her to participate in The Only Door I Can Open, an exhibition we held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts earlier this year.
Jennifer’s artistic creations are inspired by her need to use her hands as a form of gift-giving, a practice rooted in her childhood. Jennifer’s use of the color black represents strength and resilience, two of the many qualities she embodies. She uses the color black in her paintings to form bold silhouettes that express the richness of Black women. Her designs are striking and carry powerful messages.
Here is what she says about this painting, which is titled What About The Children?
“This painting represents a woman of color reaching out to her children. Three of these butterflies are mine. Statistics show that 85% of children with an incarcerated mother end up incarcerated. The black butterflies represent these children. Has anyone dared to think, ‘What about the children?’ They are our future.”
We are so excited to have Jennifer as a part of the team and can’t wait to see her portfolio develop.
Welcome to Empowerment Avenue, Jennifer!
Our Latest Work
Aaron Edward Olson reports for The Nation1 and Type Investigations about how Washington State discriminates against incarcerated immigrants by denying those being held on an “ICE hold” from accessing higher education opportunities and higher-paying jobs within their institutions.
The San Quentin Film Festival is an opportunity to level the field in Hollywood by giving industry insiders proximity to the creativity and value incarcerated filmmakers create and bring to film projects. However, as Steve Brooks reports for Documentary magazine2, some incarcerated filmmakers are still facing barriers to having their work accepted by the powers that be.
For Prism3, Anthony Cobb explores how for-profit companies are helping the Florida Department of Corrections feed its incarcerated population meals that can eventually lead to diet-related health issues, including diabetes and heart disease.
Catherine LaFleur reports for Next City4 about a hands-on heavy equipment operator training class at Lowell Correctional Institution in Ocala, Florida, that is helping reduce recidivism by offering career opportunities to incarcerated women.
Shining star Demetrius Buckley published a beautiful poem in The Yale Review5 about, among other things, our “ancestors making wishes.”
Dorothy Maraglino, a contributing writer at Prison Writers6, published a powerful list of survival tips for incarcerated women facing solitary confinement.
The Federal Communications Commission is considering a proposal that would allow prisons to jam contraband cellphones. Jeremy Busby writes in The Intercept7 about how this proposal would prevent incarcerated journalists from accurately reporting the harsh realities happening within correctional facilities.
Juan Haines, the beloved editor-in-chief of Solitary Watch8, writes for the publication about the importance of ending solitary confinement to better the mental health of incarcerated people.
“The commonwealth of Virginia, where I am incarcerated, has effectively rendered me unable to have children—not through surgery or medication, but by keeping me imprisoned through the years when I might have become a parent,” writes Mithrellas Curtis in Prism.
Accessing food and other resources in prisons is more complicated than it needs to be, writes Sara G. Kielly in The Drift9. At Bedford Hills, where she is incarcerated, the dining hall is often closed, mailrooms are backed up and overcrowded, and perishables are often distributed after they are in varying states of decomposition. As Sara writes, inedible food creates a deeper feeling of dehumanization.
Inside/Outside Insights
CONGRATULATIONS: Empowerment Avenue writer Jeremy Busby founded the nonprofit JoinJeremy to uplift incarcerated journalists and help them reach audiences beyond the publications that print their work. JoinJeremy promotes selected works from incarcerated journalists on their podcast, YouTube channel, and other multimedia platforms. JoinJeremy’s digital newsroom, The Collective, publishes educational articles about the importance of incarcerated journalists and offers meaningful avenues for supporting, protecting, and defending incarcerated journalists. Support JoinJeremy by following all their social media platforms and subscribing to their YouTube and Substack. All inquiries can be sent to info@joinjeremy.org.
ADVOCACY: Jessie Milo, policy advocate, chair of the San Quentin Policy Group, and co-creator of Arms Down, will join UNA San Francisco for a conversation about human rights in the criminal justice system. The event is taking place on Wednesday, December 10 from 6–8 p.m. at the SF War Memorial Veterans Building, Room 210. Learn more here.
LISTEN: Robert Lee Williams, a writer Empowerment Avenue supports, appeared on PM Dunne’s podcast to offer invaluable wisdom and insight about his writing process and much more. Much love, Robert.
ADVOCACY: The Journey to Justice Tour, organized by the Unlock the Box Campaign and Look2Justice, is using art, community, and lived experience to expose the harms of solitary confinement and build a national network for human rights. Through a traveling bus with interactive exhibits and community events, the tour invites people to learn, connect, and take action toward ending torture in our prisons.
Team Reflections
As we head into the last month of the year, we’ve been moving through a lot of internal changes and shifts in our community. We’ve watched opportunities for liberation open up and then disappear again. We’ve felt the appetite for convenient solidarity fade.
But one thing has remained: Our artists and writers continue to risk everything to hold a system that claims “justice” accountable to actual human rights. They do this through their creativity, their storytelling, and their ability to name the places where change is undeniable.
And honestly, amid all the paperwork, admin, operations, and nonprofit bureaucracy, there are moments when you dream of returning to the grassroots freedom of a collective, closer to your comrades, closer to the work. Still, we remain honored and grateful to be in step with inside leaders like Meech, Kwanetta, and Corey, who are on the inside putting their physical well-being on the line to fight for human rights.
So, as we gear up for 2026, the call is simple: Return to who we are. Look to our inside leaders, the ones showing what it means to hold systems accountable, build power, and move collectively toward liberation. This is not a new strategy but a continuation of practices Black communities have carried out for generations. Organizers like Angela Davis, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and George Jackson used their insights to address social problems and develop strategies. Their work shows that leadership, vision, and change start with those most impacted!
EA Team
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Type Investigations is a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to transforming the field of independent investigative journalism. Written features generally run between 3,000 and 5,000 words and the pay is typically between $3,000 and $6,000.
Documentary magazine, a publication operated by the International Documentary Association, publishes “engaging, pragmatic and provocative coverage of the documentary field.” All stories are paid and range between $100 for capsule reviews and festival reviews to $1,000 for profiles.
Prism is an independent, nonprofit newsroom led by and for people of color that launched the Right to Write Project to feature and pay incarcerated writers. They pay $.50 per word.
Next City amplifies solutions about the problems that oppress people in cities. Their goal is to reach city-builders who share their vision of transforming cities. They pay between $100 and $200 for op-eds and $400 for reported stories.
The Yale Review, a renowned journal of literature and ideas, accepts pitches for essays and criticisms through Submittable from September 1 to September 30 of each year. They pay between $500 and $1,500 for stories published in print, between $200 and $500 for stories published online, and $150 for poems published online or in print.
Prison Writers publishes uncensored, personal stories and thoughtful essays from incarcerated writers. They pay between $15 and $20 for published stories.
The Intercept investigates powerful individuals and institutions to expose corruption and injustice. It is unclear how much they pay for stories.
Solitary Watch is the premier source of news and information on solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails. They pay $250 for essays.