Today, the Inside Literary Prize—the United States’ only literary award judged by incarcerated readers—has announced its 2026 winner: The Book Censor’s Library, by Bothayna Al-Essa, translated from the Arabic by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain.
The Inside Literary Prize, founded in 2023 by Freedom Reads, the National Book Foundation, the Center for Justice Innovation, and Interabang Books co-owner Lori Feathers, “celebrates the power of literature by amplifying the insight, humanity, and voices of readers living in prison confinement.”
Each year, the prize curates a shortlist of books previously honored by the National Book Foundation, and sends them to prisons across the country. This year, almost 200 incarcerated judges considered five 2024 National Book Award finalists in Fiction and Translated Literature, and chose The Book Censor’s Library as the winner. (The other finalists were Ædnan by Linnea Axelsson translated by Saskia Vogel, All Fours by Miranda July, Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar, and My Friends by Hisham Matar.)
“I believe The Book Censor’s Library addresses the need the world most urgently,” remarked Kyra L., a judge at the Washington Corrections Center for Women. “Without a robust literary core, voices vanish. If we fail to safeguard the freedom to decide what matters, history could be rewritten. No single power should have the authority to determine what endures. Cultural exchange, perspective, and the cultivation of ideas will be stifled without broad access to literature.”
“Books have the power to bridge distances created by walls and circumstances,” added Reginald Dwayne Betts, Freedom Reads Founder & CEO. “The Inside Literary Prize invites incarcerated readers into the center of our literary conversation, reminding us that expanding the range of voices in discussions about great books reinforces literature’s purpose and its potential to transform and bring hope to people’s lives.”
