The Fire Inside Newsletter – Challenging the Carceral Monster for Thirty Years

Diana Block, Pam Fadem, Crystal Le

“They say fire doesn't survive without oxygen. Someone on the outside has to keep feeding it. For thirty years, The Fire Inside has been that breath.” Kwaneta Harris, Writer & advocate, currently incarcerated in Texas. The Fire Inside newsletter is a cross-walls collaboration between incarcerated people in California women’s prisons and advocates on the outside who are all dedicated to challenging the carceral monster through ideas, writings and art. In 2026, The Fire Inside, which is produced by the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP), is celebrating thirty years of continuous publication, making it the longest running publication for people in women’s prisons in the U.S. This panel will offer an overview of how The Fire Inside is created and the range of topics it has dealt with from forced sterilizations, struggles against deportation, egregious sexual violence, incarcerated trans people, U.S.-held political prisoners and Palestinian prisoners. The workshop will also explore how CCWP’s core commitments to collectivity, inter-generational building and abolitionist feminism have enabled us to sustain this cross-walls endeavor in the face of prison imposed barriers and censorship and discuss the challenges/monsters we expect to be fighting in the future.