Inside, no one is trying to out-beauty anyone else. On what gets suspended when women stop performing—and what that says about the outside.

An outtake from Ride or Fly, a soon to be released book written from inside prison. The day one woman is released.

Christmas Eve inside of prison and the strange beauty of a place built to break you. Written from inside a federal women’s prison.

If pills worked, I’d be first in line. It’s just that, invariably, with everything else I’ve tried, the solution becomes the problem.

One woman winding down, one just starting to feel human. The raps, the crocheted pig named Bacon, and the friend who keeps her sane.

From Jailbirds in Flight, Nicole Daedone’s memoir of her first six months in a federal detention center in Brooklyn. Part of our ongoing serialization.

Nicole Daedone is serving time at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, where she is writing the soon to be released book, Ride or Fly. This excerpt picks up where “Walking the Bright Light” left off.

Nicole Daedone is serving time in a federal detention center in Brooklyn. She wrote Jailbirds in Flight there. In this chapter she is trying to find somewhere to sit still. An excerpt.

Two women a heartbeat from swinging, a body stepping between them, and the only thing in the building stronger than fear. New writing from inside a federal women’s prison.

The women in here are more capable than most women I knew on the outside — alive, hilarious, tuned-in, fast. A dispatch from inside a federal women’s dorm.

We are wasting human power by walling it off. People are reduced to a conviction, as if that were the sum total of their lives. With no shared purpose, the days collapse into gossip and survival. The system funds compliance, not growth.

The promise of Eros is entry.