Lit Hub: How John J. Lennon Became a Prison Journalist

In January, I got a pre-paid call from John J. Lennon, who was trying to find a home for his newest story, about the difficulty of obtaining books in prison. John doesn’t own a computer or a cell phone, and until last year, he had never used Microsoft Word. So, like a foreign correspondent in the age before the internet, he wanted to dictate his copy to me. My job was to type up the draft and email it to newspaper editors.

Before John decided to become a criminal justice reporter, he lived a life of crime. He now lives and writes one hour north of New York City, in a bare cell in Sing Sing prison. He read me the new story in a soft, staccato voice, making note of every period and comma. “A few years ago, I wrote an op-ed from Attica prison for the New York Times,” he said. “A young man in his senior year of high school wrote to me afterward, and we became pen-pals.” The young man wanted to send him Just Mercy, a book by Bryan Stevenson about racial inequality on death row. But because prisoners can’t receive hardcovers, the student had to photocopy the pages and fold them, five at a time, into envelopes. “I spent the next few days reading Just Mercy, pacing my cell, grinding my teeth, and crying,” John said.

Prison life shapes every story that John reports. He types on a clear-plastic typewriter in a cell with no chair. He conducts many of his interviews in the rec yard, among the joggers and weight-lifters, and he has never been able to Google anything on his own. The prison phone system, accessible for a few hours per day, connects him to just 15 pre-approved contacts. Still, John has become a leading journalist on life inside. His first published story appeared on the website of The Atlantic, and one of his print features will soon appear in Esquire.