JoyBelle Phelan is a writer who serves as writer relations manager at Prison Journalism Project, and is co-founder and executive director of Unbound Authors. Phelan was incarcerated twice for a total of seven years and passionately believes that no one should be remembered for the worst decision they have ever made. She is using her lived experience to challenge the perceptions of what prison is like for women and what reentry can look like. While inside, she was in various leadership and peer mentor positions, worked as the pre-release clerk and helped to develop and implement the re-entry unit program. She was the first woman at her facility to be published in Colorado’s The Inside Report prison newspaper, later serving as Managing Editor while employed with DU Prison Arts Initiative. She currently volunteers in the Colorado Dept of Corrections, providing writer mentoring labs to incarcerated writers, and is a graduate of the 2023 Dream Justice cohort. She has been a guest on multiple national podcasts focused on re-entry. Her TEDx San Quentin talk can be found on YouTube; her writing can be found on the Prison Journalism Project website.
