Our Team
Katy Ryan
Dr. Katy Ryan has been a faculty member in the WVU English Department since 2000. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in twentieth-century American literature, prison studies, modern drama, and performance. She founded the Appalachian Prison Book Project, a volunteer and community nonprofit that mails free books to people imprisoned in six states, creates prison book clubs, helps to cover costs for WVU classes in prison, and provides scholarships to people coming out of prison.
Rayna Momen
Dr. Rayna Momen teaches undergraduate online criminology courses in gender and crime, punishment and social control, deviant behavior, and introductory criminology and is co-founder of the WVU Higher Education in Prison Initiative. Momen is a poet and public criminologist whose research focuses on the criminalization of marginalized populations, structural racism, prison pipelines, and the impacts of mass incarceration through a queer criminological, intersectional, and abolitionist lens.
Destinee Harper
Destinee Harper, MA, is a doctoral candidate in the English department. Her research focuses on innovative approaches to teaching and learning in prison. Destinee is a co-editor for This Book is Free and Yours to Keep: Notes from the Appalachian Prison Book Project, which is a history of the prison book project written in letters and artwork and won the 2024 Weatherford Award in nonfiction.
Danielle Stoneberg
Sophie Slaughter
Sophie Slaughter is an undergraduate student studying History and Women's and Gender Studies. Sophie's academic and advocacy work is interested in histories of resistance to criminalization, abolitionist organizing, and possibilities of prison-free futures in Appalachia and beyond.
Advisory Council members
Outside Advisory Council (2025-2026)
- Ann Pancake, Freelance Writer; Community Engagement Liaison, WVU Higher Education in Prison Initiative
- Clark Metz (he/him), Ph.D., Teaching Assistant Professor, School of Mathematical and Data Sciences, West Virginia University
- Danielle Stoneberg (she/her), P.h.D Student, Sociology; Assistant Director of Education, WVU Higher Education in Prison Initiative, West Virginia University
- Destinee Harper (she/her), English Doctoral Candidate, University Provost Fellow, West Virginia University; Assistant Program Coordinator, WVU Higher Education in Prison Initiative
- Ellen Skirvin, Assistant Teaching Professor of English, Penn State University; Appalachian Prison Book Project Board of Directors
- Gwen Bergner, Professor Emeritx of English, Harriet E. Lyon Professor Emeritx of Women's and Gender Studies, West Virginia University
- Jessie Wilkerson, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
- Jim Nolan, Professor, Sociology, West Virginia University; Director of Education, WVU Higher Education in Prison Initiative
- John Kilwein, Chair, Associate Professor, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Political Science, West Virginia University
- Joy Carr, Director of University Advising, Office of the Provost, West Virginia University
- Katy Ryan (she/her), Eberly Family Professor of Outstanding Teaching and English Professor, West Virginia University; Founding Director, WVU Higher Education in Prison Initiative
- Laura Brady, Emeritus Faculty, Department of English, West Virginia University
- Leslie Wilber, writer, cartoonist, educator, library worker
- Lou Slimak, Assistant Provost for Undergraduate Curriculum, West Virginia University
- Nathalie Singh-Corcoran (she/her), Eberly Writing Studio Coordinator and Service Professor of English, West Virginia University
- Omar Yacoub, Service Assistant Professor of English and the Assistant Director of Communication Across Communication, West Virginia University
- Rayna Momen (they/them), Ph.D., Postdoctoral Research Associate, West Virginia University Research Corporation; Co-Founder and Program Coordinator, WVU Higher Education in Prison Initiative
Inside Advisory Council (2025)
Students of the First Cohort