Some might say that Nigel Poor and Earlonne Woods were destined to meet. Poor, a professor of photography at CSU Sacramento, was volunteering with the Prison University Project at San Quentin State Prison when she met Woods, who was serving a 31-year-to-life sentence. The two bonded over a love of storytelling and with no formal experience, began a podcast together where they showcase the realities of life in prison while detailing the path of their fateful friendship. Their upcoming book, This Is Ear Hustle, shares its name with their well-received podcast, which has gone on to become a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize and is in its seventh season. The book avoids the overtly political and instead delves into the richness of humanity found even behind the bars of the prison system. With candor, the authors showcase the unlikely inspiration found in stories of the incarcerated.

At INFORUM Earlonne Woods—whose sentence was commuted in 2018—and Nigel Poor will take our stage in downtown San Francisco to help our audiences become “ear hustlers'' themselves, eavesdropping on the tales of resilience, forgiveness and the lives that exist behind some of America’s most well-guarded doors.

This program will be moderated by Piper Kerman, author of The New York Times bestseller Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison.

Note: This program contains EXPLICIT language

SPEAKERS

Nigel Poor

Visual Artist; Co-Creator and Co-Host, "Ear Hustle" Podcast; Co-Author, This Is Ear Hustle: Unflinching Stories of Everyday Prison Life

Earlonne Woods

Co-Creator and Co-Host, "Ear Hustle" Podcast; Co-Author, This Is Ear Hustle: Unflinching Stories of Everyday Prison Life

Piper Kerman

Author, Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison—Moderator

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded via video conference on October 25th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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