Turning pages at a prison book club

Author Mark Finkel has spoken to many different groups since his widely acclaimed book “The Art Thief” was published in 2023. But an inmate in the Utah State Correctional Facility was the first reader to ask him about the image of a bat on the cover.
The question came during a recent meeting of a book club that meets weekly in the Salt Lake City prison.
Finkel seemed genuinely impressed by the question, and explained that his original manuscript contained a section about the thief trying and failing to steal a bat painting, but that part was later taken out. “I got a little internal smile, thinking, ‘Wow, that was just a delightfully close reading,’” Finkel later told me. “These were people that were really present and involved in the class. The depth and deep observation skills of many of the questions was so impressive to me.”
Like other authors who have gone to the prison to discuss their work with incarcerated readers, Finkel found an audience that was both thoughtful and engaged beyond his expectation.
“I wish there was a better understanding of the human potential that exists inside of a prison,” Andy Eisin, the director of the University of Utah Prison Education Project, told me. “I wish there was a better understanding of the desire that so many people inside have to turn around their lives.”
Education, Eisin explained, offers individuals that chance. “If we provide the opportunity, people step up and take those opportunities when they’re offered.”
One of the opportunities the Prison Education Project offers is the book club, led by volunteer Elliot Morris.
Morris launched the book club for inmates in 2019 after volunteering with the Prison Education Project, which offers higher education courses and college credits to the incarcerated population. In addition to the courses, the project also offers enrichment programs that help advance its mission of social transformation and educational justice.
Morris was working as an admissions counselor at the University of Utah when he came across a poster for the Prison Education Project. He remembered a professor at NYU — where he studied English and American literature and earned his Master of Arts degree — saying she needed to leave class in time to get to Rikers Island to teach a class to detainees. It stuck with him.
Morris had planned to go into academia but ultimately decided to work in publishing instead. It wasn’t an easy decision, he said, and he knew he would always long to be in an academic setting. So he followed in his NYU professor’s footsteps and volunteered with the project. “Facilitating the book club helps scratch that itch of a literature classroom that I once dreamed of teaching,” he told me.
This is Morris’ 15th semester leading the book club. Each semester, participants vote on a theme — they read a book a week — and Morris researches and assigns books that fit that theme. He then creates an Amazon wishlist that he sends to family and friends and solicits donations on his Substack, where he writes about the book club. Last semester, the inmates read books with the theme “reading around the world,” including “Interpreter of Maladies” and “The Sympathizer.” The semester before, they read books about doubles like “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley.”
This semester, the theme is “Deseret Dreamers,” featuring books by authors who were born in Utah or currently live here. Based on some local bookstore recommendations, Morris selected a reading list and invited the authors to visit the book club. Five of those authors agreed to attend and answer questions from the readers.
The first night I observed, James McLaughlin, the author of “Bearskin,” was there to meet the readers and answer questions. “I didn’t hesitate when Elliot asked,” McLaughlin told me, explaining that his grandfather was a prison reformer in Virginia who advocated for access to education in prisons. “It felt appropriate to honor him.”
The Utah State Correctional Facility moved from Draper to northwest Salt Lake City in 2022. The buildings still look very new and clean. The classroom where the book club meets smelled of fresh carpet, and what was left of the day’s sunlight poured in through the windows. We arranged plastic chairs in a circle and then the inmates — who are imprisoned for a variety of crimes from homicide to burglary — began to appear. To a person, they greeted their visitors with a handshake, then each one introduced themselves before selecting a seat. Many asked who I was and why I was there. One inmate told me of an op-ed he had submitted to the Deseret News. “Before I was incarcerated,” he added.
Morris welcomed the dozen inmates — or the “readers,” as he refers to them — to the class and passed out fliers made by a volunteer to help guide the discussion. He noticed one of the usual readers was missing and asked where he was. “He got out!” an inmate responded. Morris’ jaw dropped in response.
After absorbing that surprising information, Morris introduced McLaughlin, who spent a few minutes explaining how he became an author, and how his love of the outdoors inspired him to write his debut novel. “Bearskin” is about a man on a mission to expose bear poachers in the mountains of Virginia. Then Morris turned the meeting over to the discussion leader — a heavily tattooed inmate wearing glasses — who shared a quote about humanity’s desire to find meaning in being animate, and explained that he believed being animate was miraculous enough.
One reader mentioned a section of the book where the book’s character operates in a fugue state, and said that he had experienced his own drug-fueled fugue state for two weeks, leading to the crime that landed him in prison. He praised McLaughlin for capturing that mode of existence. In response, McLaughlin told him that was the best compliment he’s received about his writing. Other readers praised the accuracy of portions of the book that touch on the character’s time behind bars.
With 20 minutes left in the discussion, a correctional officer popped in and announced class would have to adjourn early. They were performing a mosquito treatment on the premises, which I thought was unnecessary until later that night when I noticed a large bite in the middle of my forehead. An occupational hazard of visiting a facility built on swampland.
McLaughlin had gotten a few bites himself, he told me over the phone the next day as we talked about our collective first visit to a prison and his experience interacting with the readers. “These guys were sharp,” he said. “They were coming at (the text) from perspectives I had never thought of before. It was as high an engagement as I’ve experienced.”
According to a study conducted by RAND, inmates who participate in educational programs behind bars are 43% less likely to commit another crime and end up back in prison. They are also more likely to find employment upon release. Eisin told me, “I think that one of the things that prisons do is kind of limit people’s worlds. People are assigned to particular living units. They have schedules that are enforced upon them, and their world is very small. The programming that Elliot provides seeks to broaden their worldview.”
Eisin explained that the book club offers the incarcerated students the ability to picture themselves in different ways, to think about ideas in ways that maybe they hadn’t previously, and to be in conversation and community in ways that are unique given the setting that they’re in.
I returned for another meeting of the book club the following Thursday evening, when Finkel talked with the group about “The Art Thief.” The book tells the true story of the French art thief Stéphane Breitwieser, who stole more than 300 pieces of art from museums and stored them in his home. Before the discussion began, the inmate sitting next to me told me he didn’t believe Breitwieser’s claims that he stole for the sake of beauty. “He’s just like the rest of us,” he said. “He’s an opportunistic thief.”
After Finkel gave a slideshow presentation about his career as a journalist and the decadelong process of writing “The Art Thief,” one of the readers shared his favorite quote from the book: “When the quest outshines the treasure, you don’t want to stop questing.” Other inmates shared their familiarity with that feeling. “When you get nice things, you want nicer things,” one said. Another reader shared, “I was into a lot of crime and an image. That’s what got me here. Trying to uphold an image.”
As we walked outside after the class, we were met with the glowing pink sky of a spectacular sunset that illuminated the concrete below us and Concertina wire above, and Finkel said it had been the most engaged group of readers with whom he had ever interacted.
“I truly feel in some way that I may have gotten more out of the experience than the inmates/students themselves,” Finkel said. “You could really get a biased opinion and think these are criminals, these are inmates. … But really they are, on a much deeper level, readers and questioners, and exactly the type of people that I want to be picking up books and reading some more.”
When I asked Morris why he spends so much of his time not only leading the group but gathering books, preparing lists of possible themes, and coordinating with other volunteers, he shrugged and told me there are few things in life that he loves more than reading a book and talking about it with others. “The power that the written word can have to enlighten or challenge … I think that’s just really awesome,” he said.
He referenced a portion of scripture in the 25th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew that reads, “I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me … Inasmuch as he have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
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As the inmates left the classroom the last night I was there, one of them turned to me clutching his freshly signed copy of “The Art Thief” and told me he’s been a part of the group for all 15 semesters. “This book club has changed my life,” he said.