Writing Beyond Bars: Student Storytellers Free Incarcerated Voices

January 9, 2026

Authored by:

John DiConsiglio

When George Washington University senior Inioluwa Jobi writes to her pen pal David, the two share their favorite memories, music and food. They've never met, but Jobi knows David likes the red jollof rice at Sweet Kitchen in Northeast D.C. She knows he's a basketball fan-although he's better at watching games than playing them. And she knows he likes the quiet of museums and libraries.

But she doesn't know what he looks like-or even exactly how old he is. And she doesn't know why he's currently incarcerated at the D.C. Correctional Treatment Facility (CTF). Sometimes she's tempted to ask, but she stops herself before she writes the words.

"I don't want to think about what he did," said Jobi, a cognitive neuroscience major and creative writing minor at the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences (CCAS). "I want to think about who he is."

Jobi and David have formed a letter-writing connection through a CCAS English Department class called Digital Storytelling and Social Justice. Taught by Postgraduate Research Faculty Fellow Emma Wu, the course pairs undergraduate students with incarcerated men to collaboratively create digital narratives.

As part of a $500,000 Mellon Foundation grant-and the support of English faculty members including Associate Professor of English Annie Liontas-Wu teams with the nonprofit Free Minds Book Club on public art projects that promote restorative justice and engage students in social change.

For more than two years, she's led the pen pal exchange on parallel teaching tracks. She holds writing workshops for inmates at the correctional facility and digital storytelling courses for students at Foggy Bottom-while delivering handwritten letters between the two.

By the end of the semester, the pairs create narrative pieces using ArcGIS StoryMaps that celebrate meaningful sites to the incarcerated men-like parks, recreation centers and scenes from their youth. As the students learn the impact of their writing on other lives, the people incarcerated in CTF revisit memories often erased inside prison walls.

"It's really a radical empathy-building exercise," Wu said. Her class aims to help students feel "compassion for someone unlike themselves."

In her letters to David, Jobi shared memories from her "happy places," as she puts it: her childhood in Nigeria and her peaceful walks through the George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum. "It has a very calming effect on me," she said. David wrote about a D.C. community center that "feels like home"-and became the setting for their storytelling partnership.

"I've always wanted to highlight stories that flew under the radar and couldn't be told," Jobi said. "It reminds me how much power my voice carries-as a writer and as a human being."

A place like heaven

The class grew from Wu's experiences teaching CTF workshops alongside her undergraduate courses. In the first half of the semester, GW students-mostly junior and senior English majors-hone their own creative nonfiction and analyze examples of digital storytelling, from text-based narratives and audio essays to video and websites.

In her CTF workshops, Wu doesn't ask her incarcerated students about the charges against them. The men who volunteer often recount financial or drug-related offenses. Most are between 19 and 23, she said, although some are older. Early in the semester, she works to overcome their skepticism toward sharing their stories with strangers.

"The first classes are largely dedicated to trust building," she said. "A lot of people have come to [these men] with opportunities and projects that for one reason or another just weren't fulfilled."

Midway through the semester, the class shifts. The students match with inmates for the pen pal exchange with Wu acting as the go-between from campus and the jail. As they slowly gain trust, both students and inmates open up about the "happy places" that matter to them.

"When someone is incarcerated often what they lose is place-and, of course, place is people and community and family and memories," Liontas said. Behind bars, "people don't just lose their freedom. They lose those nuanced experiences of the world," she said.

Slowly, David's letters revealed his own favorite place-THEARC Center, or Town Hall Education Arts Recreation Campus. A network of recreation and community facilities across the city, THEARC serves more than 60,000 people with programs like dance classes, musical performances and tutoring and mentoring services. David described strolling through the quiet libraries and gardens at the Mississippi Avenue location in Southeast D.C. His favorite memory was watching a basketball tournament featuring Washington Wizards players.

Jobi and David exchanged handwritten letters, which English instructor Emma Wu delivered between the classroom and the prison.

After visiting the center, Jobi and a classmate worked with David to transform his letters into a digital narrative. She incorporated historical and demographic information about THEARC Center and layered David's handwritten words over photographs of its buildings and basketball courts. "This place is like heaven," David wrote.

For the incarcerated men, seeing the final project can be deeply affecting. Wu said men often cry when reliving their memories through the students' work. "Some have to take minutes away to themselves because they're so touched," she said. One man was overcome with emotion when a student reproduced the stained glass windows of the church where his daughter was christened. Another said seeing images of the spot where he had his first childhood kiss triggered such vivid memories that he could taste the ChapStick on her lips.

And Wu's GW students can become equally invested in their pen pals' lives. Several continued writing to the inmates even after their assignments were complete. In her fall class, one student implored Wu to ask if an inmate's family had visited him for the holidays.

"Even though they've never met and they don't know what the other looks like, they get to know each other personally," Wu said. "By developing a deeper sense of mutual understanding, [students] move from abstract ideas about restorative justice to lived, relational practice."

CCAS faculty and students also shared their insights and digital storytelling projects last spring at the English Department's 2025 Against Confinement Student Showcase, a two-day Mellon-supported program featuring community panelists and readings by Free Minds poet ambassadors.

Jobi says she and David aren't exactly friends, but she was surprised at how attached she became to him. "I didn't know how much this was going to affect me as a person," she said. Throughout the semester, some of her own friends and family wondered why she focused so much effort connecting to a man in prison. But when she unveiled her final project, Jobi's friends were touched by how she restored a piece of David's humanity.

"This has been my greatest joy," she said, "being able to bring someone's story to life."