ReEntry Lab - Building Bridges with the Justice-Impacted

The Mission

Building Bridges

Connecting Writers & Other Artists to the Arts Community

We are working to connect writers and other artists leaving incarceration with literary and arts communities ready to receive them.

We help members of the community provide returning citizens with:

Access to the missions and vocations of art in the world.
Resources and connections to help with reentry and reintegration.
Ways to engage deeply with arts, social-justice, and community-focused organizations.

We help people who’ve been directly impacted by the criminal legal system, especially those who have been incarcerated, connect to community, resources, and organizations ready to walk alongside them as they bring their work to the wider world.

ReEntry Lab is also working to help bring into the world more stories created by, through, and with people who’ve been directly impacted by the criminal legal system. (We are all at least indirectly impacted.)

If you’d like to be a part of this work, please take our survey, sign up for the newsletter, and/or contact us to find out where you can fit in.

Want to help? Sign up here.

Why ReEntry Lab?

There are many organizations centered around reentry (and doing great work). Other groups focus on the arts, and on social justice, and on building a more equitable, inclusive, and just society.

ReEntry Lab is working to bring those pieces together, building bridges between writers and other artists leaving incarceration and the larger community to which they return, in the process giving socially conscious organizations a way to connect with the people and communities who count on them to do their part in making a better world for all of us.

Better Things 5×5 Reading
& Open Mic (July 2026)

Please join us on Tuesday, July 7th, at 7:00pm, at Moon Palace Books, for our next 5×5 Reading, featuring five fantastic artists: Nen G Ramirez, folaṣade, Tony Burgess, Desdamona, and Joe Davis.

Each featured artist will take five minutes to share work. After the main reading, there will be a short break for refreshments, followed by an open mic period.

All are welcome to show up and participate in the open mic! (List is first come, first serve.) This reading, and the open mic afterward, will be hosted by Davi Gray and Erin Sharkey; both reading and open mic will feature ASL interpretation.

Masks are required at Moon Palace Books and are available on-site. This is a free event.

Better Things is a series of events sponsored by the ReEntry Lab, in partnership with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop (MPWW) and Moon Palace Books. The ReEntry Lab is an organization working to connect writers and other artists leaving incarceration to a community that’s ready to receive them.

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

There is a Facebook event, or you can add it to your Google Calendar or download an ICS file to add it to other calendars, but you can also just show up! We’d love to have you there — all are welcome at this free event.