Free Minds
Sheila Smith McKoy ’89 shows how literature opens doors for incarcerated students.
As a graduate student, Sheila Smith McKoy ’89 taught literature to women in a maximum-security prison. “The first time you walk in,” she says, “you don’t know what to expect.” But it doesn’t take long, she says, before you understand that people in prison are “human beings just like you, with feelings just like you.” Smith McKoy’s students included pregnant women and women serving life sentences. “So many of them were gifted writers,” she says. “It would break your heart to know that there’s a talent that might not ever be heard.” Some of the women Smith McKoy taught eventually became published writers, and at least one pursued a degree in English after her release.
“I made a commitment long ago that I wanted to leave work in the world. I wanted to change the world through the work that I do,” Smith McKoy says. With that mindset, she earned three degrees in English — her bachelor’s from NC State, her master’s from UNC Chapel Hill and her Ph.D. from Duke University. She served in faculty and administrative roles in academia for 30 years, including 13 as an English professor at NC State, and worked in mediating and peacemaking efforts in her community, higher education spaces and nonprofits.
Now, Smith McKoy dedicates her time to consulting work and writing. Last fall, her 2023 book, Teaching Literature and Writing in Prisons, was awarded the Teaching Literature Book Award, a national prize given by Idaho State University. “It’s not every day that a book you wrote two years ago gets an award,” she says. “It was a really beautiful surprise.”
“A life behind bars doesn’t mean that the mind is behind bars.”
Smith McKoy, 67, says before Teaching Literature and Writing in Prisons was published, teachers had few resources to turn to when working with incarcerated students. “This book helps you figure out some of the issues you might encounter with the apparatus of prison life, with prison regulations and restrictions, with how you resource students who have absolutely no resources.” She hopes it empowers teachers and creates opportunities for incarcerated students.
Teachers can have a big impact, she says, just by showing up to teach in prisons. “A life behind bars doesn’t mean that the mind is behind bars.”
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