Keri Blakinger
Investigative Reporter, Criminal Justice Expert


Keri Blakinger is an investigative reporter for The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news outlet. Her work there focuses primarily on prisons and the death penalty. She is the organization’s first formerly incarcerated reporter and has authored a book about her experiences, Corrections in Ink.

Before coming to The Marshall Project, Keri Blakinger worked at the Ithaca Times, the New York Daily News and the Houston Chronicle, where she was on the Pulitzer-finalist team covering Hurricane Harvey. In 2019, her work covering women’s jails for The Washington Post Magazine helped win the organization a National Magazine Award.

She has spoken at a variety of colleges, including Cornell University, Emory University, and the University of Texas. As 2021 Journalist in Residence, she’s also spoken at the University of Wisconsin. When speaking to universities, she has done everything from talks for small classes to panels and speeches for a few hundred attendees. She has also moderated panels at SXSW, the Texas Tribune Festival and the Brooklyn Book Festival. Also, she has been on MSNBC, ABC, Fresh Air, Democracy Now!, Pod Save the People and HBO Real Sports.

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HARDCOVER
St. Martin’s Press

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...
An Evening with Keri Blakinger Keri tells her life story, tracing her path through addiction and prison until she found success as a critically acclaimed author and an award-winning investigative reporter who covers prisons. Along the way, Keri examines the ways race and privilege shaped her story, and allowed her a second chance that many prisoners do not get.
Journalism and Justice Based on the impact of her own work covering prisons and death row, Keri speaks about the power of investigative journalism. At the same time, she offers some criticism by unpacking how the media handles criminal justice and crime coverage, how this has historically been damaging, what’s changing and what needs to change.
The Truth About Prisons Keri talks about what she has uncovered in her time as a prisons reporter - things she did not know even after doing prison time herself. She speaks about the reality of mass incarceration, and how prison conditions are the third rail for many activists and reporters, which is why they are much worse than commonly understood.
FOIA And Other Four-Letter Words Keri has established herself as a nationally recognized investigative reporter, in part through her dogged use of public records. In this talk tailored to lawyers, reporters or journalism students, she runs through the basics of requesting public records and offers tips and tricks for getting good results.

Visit Keri’s personal author website.

Read The Los Angeles Times‘s profile on Keri and Corrections in Ink.

Listen to LA NPR affiliate KCRW’s Scheer Intelligence’s interview with Keri about Corrections in Ink and the prison system.

Read about Keri’s determination to improve the criminal justice system in The New York Times

Read about Keri in The Cornell Chronicle.

Check out Keri’s feature in the New York Times Editor’s Choice.

Check out Keri’s interview on Democracy Now.

Follow Keri Blakinger on Twitter and Instagram.

“Inspiring and relevant, brave and brutal.”
―New York Times

“The book is a conversational, tragicomic, and at times incisive rendition of the author’s fall-and-redemption journey.”
―Texas Observer

“Utterly readable. With Corrections in Ink you get what you came for.”
―New York Magazine

“It’s this rare combination of personal narrative and reporting that makes Corrections in Ink such a singular reading experience."
―BookPage