editorial board
Joan Parkin
Editor in Chief
Joan Parkin is Professor Emerita at Feather River College and the author of Perspectives from the Cell House, An Anthology of Prisoner Writings and The Prisoners and The Podium. She received her bachelor’s degree with a major in English and minors in French and Philosophy from Boston University and PhD in Comparative Literature from The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York. Her dissertation was a comparative Marxist analysis of Richard Wright’s Native Son and Albert Camus’ L’Étranger. She is the former Director and co-founder of Feather River College’s Incarcerated Student Program and has taught college students inside the prisons for over a decade. As an organizer for the Campaign to End the Death Penalty in Chicago, Joan was a leading abolitionist who helped free five wrongfully convicted death row inmates. Today she teaches English to incarcerated students for Boston University’s Prison Education Program and continues to do anti-racist and social justice work.
Sophie Yoakum
Production Editor
Sophie manages and edits the monthly Vanguard Incarcerated Press newsletter and edits, produces, and conducts outreach for the Everyday Injustice podcast. She graduated from UCLA in 2023 with a B.A. in English and a minor in Professional Writing and now lives in the Bay Area.
Jamel Walker
Jamel Walker is a member of Vanguard Incarcerated Press Advisory Board. As a youthful offender, he was sentenced to Life Without Parole. He is 58, and is currently serving his 37th year of incarceration.
During his years of incarceration, he has transformed himself into a social justice advocate, paralegal, writer, Certified Peer Literacy Mentor, and a member of Phi Theta Kappa honor society. As a social justice advocate and paralegal, he has successfully litigated a civil rights action against the CDCR effecting change in their discriminatory treatment of incarcerated citizens, and vindicated his and fellow incarcerated citizens’ right to privacy when telephonically communicating with their attorneys. Because of his litigation efforts, he has affected change in the policy of the Los Angeles Public Defenders Office in how they handle former client files, and has assisted fellow incarcerated citizens in successfully challenging their wrongful convictions and/or sentences.
As a Certified Peer Literacy Mentor, he has assisted fellow incarcerated citizens in learning to read, to earn their GED/HSD, and enroll in community college. He has earned undergraduate degrees in Sociology and, Social Behavioral Sciences. He is currently an undergraduate student at California State University – Sacramento majoring in Communication Studies.
D. Razor Babb
Founding editor of the Corcoran Sun, and Mule Creek Post.
PEN Writing Awards winner, author of several novels and informationals, including, “Icicle Bill”, ” Goodbye Natalie”, “Last Lockdown”, the ” American Prisoner ” series, and others.
As a prisoner journalist and writer is devoted to helping prisoner writers get published and kicking open the doors that will allow prisoner writers access to the publishing world, tapping into the infinite potential that we all are a part of.
Angie Gordon
Plucky and unapologetic, sardonic, and frequently scorned by a variable rabble of her incarcerated peers, Angie D. Gordon is an outspoken voice in prison abolition, an accomplished scholar and researcher in Trans-Carceral Studies, and generally aggrieved over her lack of more mentionable accomplishments.
Incarcerated in the state of California, Ms. Gordon has received the full suite of in-prison college opportunities, which include a dribbling string of associate degrees from various community colleges, and a Bachelor’s in Communication Studies from California State University Sacramento. Focused primarily on research and academic scholarship, Ms. Gordon is currently engaged in the study of how the ideological orientations of correctional officers influence their interpretation and enforcement of the law.
She has been published in a meager smattering of incarcerated press sources, including the Mule Creek Post, Perspectives from the Cell Block: An Anthology of Prisoner Writings, and ” The Prison Journalism Project”. Presently, Ms. Gordon is in the review process for publication in Critical Criminology: An International Journal, as well as preparing to present the findings of an original study at the American Society of Criminology’s Eastern Conference, 2023.
Ms. Gordon is committed to elevating the voices of incarcerated folx across the country, and dedicated to the equitable integration of their voices within both national and localized discussions on the reform and/or abolition of the criminal processing system.
advisory board
Steve Brooks
Steve Brooks is the Editor-in-chief of the San Quentin News. He is also an award-winning writer who has written for numerous publications and who works as a Correspondent for the Prison Journalism Project and contributor for Empowerment Avenue.
Steve enjoys being a voice for the voiceless and hopes to help end our current system of mass incarceration in exchange for a model designed to help rehabilitate people and send them home.
Holly Davidson
Holly Davidson is 36 years old and just beginning her fourth year of incarceration. She has not been idle with her time. She’s made it her mission to utilize her time to better herself and reach out and help as many others as possible. Since arriving at Central California Women’s Facility two years ago, she’s taken positive steps toward completing her self-appointed mission. She’s completed many self-help groups, including mentorship, leadership, getting out of your own way, and Training 4 Trainers (T4T). She took these groups so that she could become a mentor and a facilitator.
Once Holly became an active facilitator, she began to create a curriculum of her own to introduce to her unit. She lives in a rehabilitative programming unit (RPU), and residents in this unit must maintain a write-up-free lifestyle and participate in the in-house self-help groups. The groups she created, “Writefully Expressed” & “SketchIT 101,” are creative writing and beginner drawing. She believes that some people like herself will benefit from having a creative outlet.
While doing all this, Holly has completed the Substance Abuse Program (SAP), and is part of the Adult Music Program and Prison Arts Collective. She is on the waiting list for the Yard-Time Literacy Group and to work with R.Y.S.E. (youth outreach) and the Little Angel’s puppy program. She is the unit’s white Inmate Advisory Council (IAC). For this next year, she hopes that she will be able to make some difference in the lives of the incarcerated.
She writes as much as she can and as often, as she aspires to someday become a published writer. She is happy to have recently become part of the Vanguard Incarcerated Press family. The VIP has given her a chance to be a voice without censorship; she is truly grateful for this. Overall, her time has so far been productive, and she will continue to take steps towards ensuring that she is a better version of herself when she walks out of here than when she walked in.
