Join Donate Now

Open search
Home / Profiles / Moira Marquis
A person with short, wavy brown hair and a slight smile wears a textured gray sweater, posing as if reading between the bars against a plain, light background.

Moira Marquis

Senior Manager, The Freewrite Project

Moira Marquis is the Freewrite project senior manager in the prison and justice writing department at PEN America. Marquis has many years of experience teaching writing in both secondary and higher education, as well as leading Asheville Prison Books, and founding Saxapahaw Prison Books. She has a PhD in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Censoring Imagination: Why Prisons Ban Fantasy and Science Fiction | Moira Marquis on the Importance of Magical Thinking For the Incarcerated
LitHub, December 7, 2023

Articles by Moira Marquis

A smiling man in a suit raises his fist and holds a large book. The black-and-white photo, evoking Martin Sostre the jailhouse lawyer, is overlaid with colorful cutouts of clouds, a yellow butterfly, and red books.
Prison and Justice Writing
Wednesday April 19

The Legacy of Martin Sostre (1923-2015)

Moira Marquis pays homage to Martin Sostre, a self-taught jailhouse lawyer who won several lawsuits against censorship to secure the rights of incarcerated people.

Read More
An abstract image featuring three open books and one closed book in shades of red and white, over a bright red background with a torn piece of green paper and postal stamp markings.
Prison and Justice Writing
Wednesday April 19

An Interview with Chicago Books to Women in Prison

PEN America’s Moira Marquis interviews Chicago Books to Women in Prison to learn more about why they choose to work exclusively with women’s prisons.

Read More
A book cover titled Prisons Have a Long Memory with an abstract wire design is shown. To the right are two headshots—one possibly of Moira Marquis—plus a Pen America logo and a yellow butterfly on a yellow background.
Prison and Justice Writing
Thursday March 16

On Bridgeworks Oregon’s “Prisons Have a Long Memory: Life Inside Oregon’s Oldest Prison”

Moira Marquis reviews Tracy D. Schlapp and Danny Wilson’s “Prisons Have a Long Memory: Life Inside Oregon’s Oldest Prison” (Bridgeworks Oregon, 2022).

Read More

More Articles by Moira Marquis

An abstract image featuring three open books and one closed book in shades of red and white, over a bright red background with a torn piece of green paper and postal stamp markings.
Prison and Justice Writing
Thursday February 16

What’s Mildred Taylor Got to Do With It?: Race, Prison Book Bans, and the Power in Storytelling

A collage of banned book covers appears above the text Banned Books Week 2022 and the hashtag #FreeTheBooks with Pen America’s logo in the bottom left corner.
Prison and Justice Writing
Thursday September 15

Refused: 15 years as a Books to Prison Program Volunteer