In 2004, she founded the Appalachian Prison Book Project, a community organization that sends free books to women and men imprisoned in six states. She has edited a collection of creative and critical writings on the death penalty, Demands of the Dead: Executions, Storytelling, and Activism (Univ. of Iowa, 2012). Her essays appear in American Literature, African American Literature, Studies in the Novel, Philosophy and Literature, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, and the collection Political and Protest Theatre After 9/11: Patriotic Dissent.