2025 was a very productive and prosperous year for BTP! Some of our favorite highlights: We will have welcomed about 350 volunteers, donating around 8000hrs We grew our successful partnerships with 7 independent bookstores We hired a new Program Coordinator We caught up from being 5 months behind in Jan to being about a month and a half behind now A fine reading by Board member Anne in Issaquah brought renewed interest to 'Dear Books to Prisoners', a sequel to which we hope

Fund named for Bellingham literacy activist, Nancy Duncan Huss Books to Prisoners, which has been sending free books to prisoners since 1973, was approached this year by a donor whose stated interest was serving as many people as possible. The donor was thinking big, bigger than BTP alone could manage at short notice. What BTP COULD do was recruit others to this worthy cause. "BtP organizers recognize that, over the short term, leveraging other groups' capacities is an effect

Books we're out of: Coloring books for adults (no nudity) Paperback books about automotive repair and maintenance Paperback self help Figure Drawing for Kids, or other paperback drawing guides without nudity Paperback fantasy Paperback dictionaries Paperback Jewish nonfiction and fiction You may notice a trend here. The number of prisons and jails that don't allow people to have hardcover books grows by the month. Paperbacks can go so many places that hardcovers can't. Book

Whether your volunteer time is spent reading and answering letters or wrapping books before they are mailed out, you’ve come across situations where you have pulled a book from the shelf or an assembled package and now that book needs to be reshelved. Check yo'self before you shelf yo'self Moving forward, rather than trying to reshelve the books yourself, please stack them on the table in the storage room (the small room adjacent to the file cabinets/closet). We are asking t

The Front is the student newspaper at Western Washington University, in Bellingham WA. Journalism major Myla Balser interviewed several volunteers with Books to Prisoners in Seattle and a couple of Whatcom County literacy activists to connect the dots: people who read in prison have better post-release outcomes. "OPINION: Reading behind bars: The fight for literacy, dignity and rehabilitation - Incarcerated people find hope, autonomy and self-worth through literature provide

We Can’t Forget People Experiencing Incarceration in Our Fight for Readers’ Rights , an essay published today on Book Riot, describes...