Book Rooms in Prison update
More books are now on their way to HMP Wormwood Scrubs.
The new collection will go to populate 4 more open Book Rooms, one on each Wing. Local business Boden has generously agreed to sponsor the fitting out and redecoration of all 5 Book Rooms. GAB has again been overwhelmed by the level of support for this great collaboration: Harper Collins, Penguin, Orion and Little, Brown have all been fabulously generous. Beautiful selections of books have come in from Faber and Everyman, from John Sandoe bookshop, from Forward. Sage Publications have helped us again as they have before. York PEN sent a wonderfully thoughtful donation of books collected at a recent event and PEN authors brought books to donate to one of their recent events. 
Sonia Friedman Productions have kindly sent a donation as has Prison Fiction and of course Quick Reads has been fantastic. Numerous individual donations have warmed the heart and helped fill the shelves– amongst others Rachel Kelly, Anthony Gardner, Judith O’Driscoll, Miriam Halahmy, Joan Lennon, Lissa Evans, Pauline Melville and Erwin James. For those who do not have English as a first language, book donations have also been received from the Polish Library in Hammersmith and the following Embassies – Norway – Mexico – Sweden – Finland – Netherlands and Luxembourg.
Special thanks must also go to everyone at Space Station Brentford who have helped GAB way beyond the call of duty. None of this could happen at all without our own GAB supporters, nor without the dedication, encouragement, enthusiasm and sheer hard work of those on the inside, notably David Redhouse, the Deputy Governor, and Michael Sherwood, Custodial Manager of B Wing who is overseeing the whole Book Room project. The passion and care of Scrubs Volunteer Magdalen Evans have driven it from the start.
GAB received this email from Erwin James “Without people like you who care what happens in our prisons people like me wouldn’t stand a chance. [The] book rooms idea is fantastic, really I can just imagine the impact they’ll have.”