In today’s episode, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah sits down with Freedom Reads Founder & CEO Reginald Dwayne Betts and Steven Parkhurst, Communications Manager at Freedom Reads. Adjei-Brenyah reads from his novel Chain-Gang All-Stars, which was shortlisted for the 2025 Inside Literary Prize, the first major US literary prize awarded exclusively by incarcerated judges. Chain-Gang All-Stars takes place in an imagined future where people serving life sentences can opt-in to gladiatorial death matches in an attempt to gain their freedom. Loretta Thurwar and Hurricane Staxxx are lovers and fan favorites, and as they compete, they are forced to confront the brutal spectacle they’ve become a part of. Adjei-Brenyah delves into the idea of the prison system as a failure of imagination and reflects on the seven years he spent writing this novel. This conversation is discerning; it attempts to answer the hard questions, to understand desperation and the necessity of forgiveness. Adjei-Brenyah is sharp and curious in his consideration of what reading means for freedom.
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is a National Book Foundation “5 under 35” honoree and the author of Friday Black and Chain-Gang All-Stars. His Friday Black collection won the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. His debut novel, Chain-Gang All-Stars, was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction and selected as a New York Times Top 10 Book of the Year. He currently lives in the Bronx.
