In 2025-2026, we are partnering with Unbound Authors to provide writing labs and courses in eight correctional facilities and to expand programming. We are also working on a journalism project across Colorado prisons that would involve the offering of storytelling and reporting classes in multiple facilities and the production of a new publication by incarcerated writers both in print and digitally.
In recent years, DU PAI has produced newspapers, magazines, anthologies, and journals featuring the work of incarcerated writers and creators.
Previous Projects
LuxLit Press
LuxLit Press was the publishing venture of DU PAI, and it was an intentional collaboration inside and out of prisons in the state of Colorado and beyond. Through the publication of original materials created by people who are incarcerated, LuxLit Press seeked to spark new understandings. By seeing, supporting, and strengthening the luminescence of every author it comes into contact with, LuxLit strived to celebrate the work, craft, and joy of publication.
IF LIGHT CLOSED ITS EYES
IF LIGHT CLOSED ITS EYES is a verbatim documentary play, created from 100 interviews, exploring the criminal justice system and shared humanity. This production is performed, designed and produced by over 50 incarcerated artists, with the guidance of DU Prison Arts Initiative (DU PAI) faculty, in Sterling Correctional Facility (SCF) in the Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) and is the culmination of over two and a half years of work by the creative team.
Imagining Worlds: An Anthology of Plays by Artists from Colorado's Prisons is a collection of creative work selected from DU PAI's course Imagining Worlds: Reading and Writing Plays. This 12-week class served over 200 incarcerated residents in ten Colorado Department of Corrections' facilities in the summer of 2020.
"Sojourn: The Search" is a year-long journal composed of daily prompts which ripple out from the theme of ‘the search.’ No pursuit is too BIG or too small to explore in these pages. No search is trivial or unwelcome here. We believe that being alive in the hopes of something yet to come is elemental to our existence as human beings. Arts in Society is a proud supporter of Sojourn.
In this amazing book, "Tell It Slant: An Anthology of Creative Nonfiction from Colorado's Prisons," participants from ten Colorado Department of Corrections facilities contributed original essays, poems, recipes, journal articles and excerpts from memoirs.
The Inside Report was a newspaper produced within the Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) in partnership with The University of Denver Prison Arts Initiative (DU PAI) between 2018-2023. The DU PAI team collaborated with a diverse group of incarcerated individuals to develop and publish The Inside Report — sharing the voices of incarcerated writers and creating opportunities for them to speak to one another as well as the wider world
Reverberations The Magazine was a high-quality literary and visual arts magazine with engaging, thought-provoking ideas, providing a critical and creative outlet for incarcerated individuals and serving as a voice for a community of writers and scholars, artists, and visionaries, to grapple with big questions, stimulate minds and spark imaginations.
