Current Issue

Fall 2024

Vol. 1, No. 1

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Beyond Bars Literary Journal - Vol. 1, Issue 1
Features

“Soft in a Hard Place”

by Cameron Terhune

Features

“Plantanos Con Frijoles y Crema”

by Brittany Delgado

Features

“Later”

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Features

“McDonald’s Jesus”

by F.R. Martinez

our mission

With a collaborative team of editors inside and outside the carceral system, we celebrate, curate and publish the rich, diverse tales of incarcerated individuals.

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call for entries

Beyond Bars welcomes submissions from those living within or impacted by the carceral system.

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The Beyond Bars Blog

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December 21, 2025

Idle Hands: Boredom in Carceral Spaces

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December 21, 2025

Editors’ Notes: “His Place” by Elena House-Hay

This dramatization of past traumas through the future tense is the essay’s narrative engine.

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December 22, 2023

The Carceral System in Film I–The Big House (1930)

As one of the fiction editors at Beyond Bars, I take a look at how movies from different time periods show the carceral system.

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With a collaborative team of editors inside and outside the carceral system, we celebrate, curate and publish the rich, diverse tales of incarcerated individuals.

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