Keri Blakinger
Keri Blakinger
Keri Blakinger is an investigative reporter for the nonprofit news outlet ProPublica, where she covers federal prisons and the death penalty. She is the author of Corrections in Ink, a critically-acclaimed 2022 memoir about her path from prisoner to prisons reporter, and producer of the Oscar-nominated short documentary, I Am Ready, Warden.
She’s also been a staff writer at the New York Daily News, the Houston Chronicle, The Marshall Project and the Los Angeles Times. She has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist two times — first as a part of a Houston Chronicle team covering Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and later for her 2023 feature story about the Dungeons & Dragons players of Texas Death Row. 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. She was a 2025 New America Fellow and the follow year she returned to Cornell as a Distinguished Visiting Journalist. 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 and been a guest on MSNBC, ABC, NPR’s Fresh Air, Democracy Now!, Pod Save the People and HBO Real Sports.
|
Trade Paperback
|
“Brave, brutal . . . a riveting story about suffering, recovery, and redemption. Inspiring and relevant.”
—The New York Times
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 ...
|
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
