Vendor
	Fletcher Agency Yona Levin
Original language
English

Corrections in Ink

Keri Blakinger

An electric and unforgettable memoir about a young woman's journey—from the ice rink, to addiction and a prison sentence, to the newsroom—and how she emerged with a fierce determination to expose the broken system she experienced.

An elite, competitive figure skater growing up, Keri Blakinger poured herself into the sport, even competing at nationals. But when her skating partner suddenly abandoned her, her world shattered. With all the intensity she saved for the ice, she dove into self-destruction. From her first taste of heroin, the next nine years would be a blur—living on the streets, digging for a vein, selling drugs and sex, plunging off a bridge when it all became too much, all while trying to hold herself together enough to finish her degree at Cornell.

So Keri shouldn’t have been surprised when, on a cold day during her senior year, the police stopped her. Caught with a Tupperware container full of heroin, she was arrested and ushered into a holding cell, a county jail, and finally into state prison. There, in the cruel "upside down,” Keri witnessed horrible, callous conditions and encountered women from all walks of life—women who would change Keri forever.

Two years later, Keri emerged from prison sober and determined to make the most of the second chance she was given—a rare opportunity impacted by her privilege as a white woman from a middle-class background. She stumbled into a local reporting job and eventually moved to Texas, where she started covering nothing other than: prisons. Over her career as a journalist, she has dedicated herself to exposing the broken system as only an insider could, bringing a fierce determination to every piece she writes in hopes of holding officials accountable.

Not just a story about getting out and getting clean, this rich memoir is about finding redemption within yourself, as well as from the outside world, and the power of second chances. Written in a searing voice, Corrections in Ink is told with unflinching honesty and jolts of irreverent humor, and uncovers a dark and brutal system that affects us all.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Keri Blakinger is a journalist at The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization focused on criminal justice. She has previously worked with the Houston Chronicle, the New York Daily News, and the Ithaca Times, covering hurricanes, drug raids, and executions, and investigating everything from conditions of incarceration to prison sexual harassment to juvenile courts. Her writing has appeared VICE, The Washington Post, NBC News, The Appeal, Salon, Quartz and more.

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Book Published 2022-05-01 by St. Martin's Press

Comments

A resonant call for criminal justice reform rings out from investigative journalist Blakinger’s extraordinary debut. When her figure skating partner left her in 2001, dashing their dreams of competing in the Olympics, 17-year-old Blakinger redirected her intensity on the ice toward self-destruction. After experimenting with drugs during a high school summer program at Harvard, Blakinger spiraled into a nine-year heroin addiction, turning to petty crime and sex work to support her habit. Still, she was “a dean’s-list student at Cornell” and writing for the school’s newspaper when, in 2010, her felony conviction for heroin possession made national headlines. Chronicling in unsparing prose the cruelties she suffered for nearly two years behind bars—where “you are nothing,” and “torture” prevails over “treatment”—Blakinger depicts the slow stripping away of her humanity, but she also writes of learning “how to steal joy in a place built to prevent it.” While her experience spurred her, after her release, to spend the next decade as a journalist reporting on U.S. correctional facilities’ vast failings, Blakinger resolutely notes how her “privilege” as a white woman enabled her to reclaim a life post-parole that many others aren’t afforded. Her self-awareness is bracing and her indictment of the prison industrial system raises searing questions around its punitive culture. This is absolutely sensational.

"Corrections in Ink is a groundbreaking debut from an extraordinary writer; in her memoir, Blakinger offers a searing work of self-examination, an inquiry of power, and a funny, provocative, and inspiring personal story of addiction, prison, and investigative journalism. Her book stands as a feminist response to David Carr's The Night of the Gun, a testament to where a woman can go after rock-bottom, the power to transform oneself, and the imperative to discover and tell the truth."
—Piper Kerman, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Orange Is the New Black

"[Corrections in Ink] is a hair-raising tale of a girl torn between perfectionism and self-destruction, and a woman who uses her profound gifts to help set others free. How that girl became that woman demonstrates the beauty of storytelling—and sobriety."
—Sarah Hepola, New York Times bestselling author of Blackout

"It's hard to think of a reporter more deeply devoted to exposing the brokenness of the American prison system than Keri Blakinger, who in Corrections in Ink turns her journalistic eye and narrative gift to her own story—a riveting journey through the depths of addiction and incarceration. As Keri writes, so few who are sucked into the carceral system receive the second chance that she was given, which is why it's impossible to read this book and not be inspired, and called to action, by her dedication to exposing the inhumane and injustice status quo within our country's jails and prisons."
—Wesley Lowery, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author of They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement

An investigative reporter reflects on the time she spent in the prison system for a drug crime.
Growing up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Blakinger was a good student and promising figure skater who had dreams of competing at the highest level. However, her academics and athleticism concealed darker truths: an eating disorder and suicidal tendencies. When her figure-skating partner abruptly quit their doubles team, her skating career collapsed, plunging her into persistent depression, which she tried to address with drugs, eventually turning to heroin. Her habit continued until her senior year at Cornell, when she was arrested for possessing what was falsely reported as “$150,000 of smack.” Following her arrest, Blakinger spent years in the prison system, where she not only got sober, but also received a firsthand education in the savage inhumanity of the American carceral system. “Behind bars, there are no rules. Sure, there is a rulebook and there are things you cannot do,” she writes. “But when it matters, no one is watching….All the futility, the small cruelties, the refusal to see us as fully human—it was not a flaw in the system. It was the system.” Upon her release, Blakinger became a journalist whose many reports on incarceration—for the Marshall Project, where she currently works, and previously for the Houston Chronicle, New York Times, and other outlets—have resulted in much-needed reforms. Throughout her narrative, the author emphasizes the privileges that enabled her recovery, and she shows her commitment to exposing the practices that make Black and brown prisoners much less likely to succeed. Blakinger’s voice is frank but compassionate, as she lovingly but truthfully owns up to her mistakes. Her deeply researched analysis of the dehumanizing nature of incarceration is trenchant and infused with the passion of her personal experiences. The story moves quickly, populated with characters who are deeply flawed yet often sympathetic.
A gorgeously written, page-turning memoir about addiction, prison, and privilege.

Blakinger's raw and important memoir isn't only a drug recovery and success story. It's a searing condemnation of our cruel and unjust project of caging human beings, a firsthand account of what this entails and a challenge not to look away from America's flawed and punitive carceral system.

In her memoir, “Corrections in Ink,” Keri Blakinger writes about her determination to improve the criminal justice system.
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