Juan Peterson continues to meet with the Free Minds Book Club, even after being released from prison.

In The Washington Post, Robert Samuels visits a group of former inmates, juveniles who had been sentenced as adults, who have found company, solace, and encouragement in their book club, even after being released from prison.

In jail, where it started, the book club is called Free Minds, and has seen 940 prisoners pass through. After journalist Kelli Taylor became pen pals with a death row inmate who loved books, she and fellow journalist Tara Liberty founded the nonprofit book club. When they realized that the club’s alumni would need more, not less, support when they were released from prison, they decided to extend their mission.

On their website they write, “Free Minds recognizes that books and creative writing have the incredible power to teach, build community, inspire individuals and change lives…The Book Club operates democratically with books chosen by majority vote. Members have chosen books like Makes Me Wanna Holler, Nathan McCall’s raw account of his troubled youth and his time behind bars, which allow them to feel a personal connection with a book and its author, often for the first time. ”

The Reentry Program builds on the connections made in the Book Club, and offers resources and support, including meetings, to members who have been released. “Free Minds connects its recently released members to the resources and programs in the community that will help them achieve their educational and career goals.”

Robert Barksdale was 16 when he was sent to prison, and 25 when Sameuls caught up with him, leading a writing workshop for a classroom full of students in NE Washington.

Tired at the time of sitting in his jail cell, Barksdale joined the book club as an excuse to go to a room with windows. He would slip into the nondescript classroom in the jail and lay his head on a desk, saying nothing.

It took months for the two leaders to persuade Barksdale to write a poem. Then, he scribbled stanzas too profane to print, but the leaders applauded his sense of rhyme. Encouraged, he wrote more.

“The brothers I used to roll on the streets with? All of them are gone. Except one, who is serving 60 years in prison,” Barksdale said, reflecting on his time living near the Mount Vernon Triangle in Northwest. “I am not proud of what I did, but it turned out to be kind of beautiful. I get a chance to be somebody.”

Barksdale and his friends Phil Mosby, Calvin Minor, and Juan Peterson all continue to meet up with their Free Minds group. When Samuels visited them at a club meeting, they set goals for the new year (“understand freedom,” have children, get a truck driving license), and then Taylor gave them a writing prompt.

“It’s a new year, a new you,” she said. “Write about what it means to be ‘new.’ ”

Peterson, who had joined the book club a year after Mosby was arrested on armed robbery charges, went to a corner and began to scribble. Now out of prison, his goal was to become a lawyer:

“No more heartaching sins

from the dark place within

thinking of back then it’s too complicated to comprehend

I’m awestruck from the view

It’s like I’m seeing two

My mind is displaying a brighter hue

It feels good to be brand new”

You can find much more information about the Free Minds Book Club and the work they do at www.freemindsbookclub.org.