FEATURED BOOK
2024 Haymarket Books
We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition
A vital anthology exploring the intersections between caregiving and abolition.
BIO
Kim Wilson is an educator, writer, and artist. She is the cofounder, cohost, and producer of the Beyond Prisons podcast, and co-editor of We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition. Kim received a Leeway Transformation Award in 2023 for her ongoing commitment to art and social justice.
A social scientist by training, Dr. Wilson’s work focuses on examining the interconnected functioning of systems, including poverty, racism, ableism, and heteropatriarchy, within carceral structures. Her work delves into the extension and expansion of these systems beyond their physical manifestations of cages and fences, to reveal how carcerality is imbued in policy and practice. She explores how these systems synergize to exacerbate the challenges faced by under-resourced communities, revealing a deliberate intention to undermine and further marginalize vulnerable populations.
Portrait by Paul Lacombe
CREATIVE PRACTICE
Kim teaches arts-based workshops that evoke a sense of wonder, joy, and possibility. Her academic work is rooted in phenomenology — centering people's lived experiences as the basis for analysis and meaning-making. Her artistic practice extends that grounding by using art as a vehicle to address social and political issues.
In some of her work, she intentionally uses found objects, thrifted materials, and discarded books, as commentary on how access to art supplies is so often reserved for people with means. Drawing from her work with incarcerated people and artists, she sees prison pedagogies — making use of what's available — as a guiding principle for both how to approach art-making and how to show up in the world.
Her intermodal practice moves across visual arts, crafts, movement, writing, and theater-shaped through mentorship, workshops, coursework, and self-study across expressive arts, and Theater of the Oppressed.
Arts and Modalities
CONSULTING
Kim is an independent trainer and organizational development consultant working across industries. She specializes in cultivating healthy workplace dynamics through bespoke training programs, facilitator training, and curriculum design and delivery.
Training and Organizational Development
HIGHER EDUCATION
Over more than twenty years, she has taught graduate and undergraduate courses across a wide range of institutions, including Prescott College, New York University's Gallatin School (Prison Education Program at Wallkill Correctional Facility), Rowan University, Temple University, Thomas Jefferson University, and Church Teachers' College in Jamaica — covering subjects from social and political theory, writing, and research methods, to organizational communication, leadership development, and public policy.
Teaching
PODCASTING AND MEDIA
Kim is the Co-Founder, Producer, and Host of Beyond Prisons (2017–Present), a public education podcast focused on prison abolition and anti-carceral practice. With more than 100 episodes and a global listenership, the show has built partnerships with academic institutions, advocacy organizations, and media outlets.
Elle Magazine, named Beyond Prisons in their Anti-Racist Podcast List (2020). Podcast Review: a Los Angeles Review of Books Channel listed Beyond Prisons as one of ‘8 Podcasts to Help You Imagine a World Without Police or Prisons’ (2020), and Feedspot.com ranked Beyond Prisons as one of the ‘Best Prison Podcasts on the Planet’ (2020).
In January 2025, Feedspot.com voted Beyond Prisons as one of The Top 15 podcasts on the web, and featured it in The Top 10 Mass Incarceration Podcasts list.
Beyond Prisons
BOOKS AND WRITING
Wilson, K. (2026, January 8). "Mamie Till-Mobley Refused to Let Her Son, Emmett Till, Be Forgotten." Truthout.
Schenwar, Maya, & Wilson, Kim (Eds.). (2024). We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition. Haymarket Books.
Wilson, K. (2023). "Prison Censorship Harms All of Us." In Kaba, M. (Ed.), Return to Sender zine.
Wilson, K., & Nam-Sonenstein, B. (2021) (Interviewed for). "Abolitionist Media Making." In Coyle, M.J., & Scott, D. (Eds.),The Routledge International Handbook of Penal Abolition (pp. 64–74). Routledge.
Wilson, K., & Nam-Sonenstein, B. (2021). "Hope is a Discipline." Excerpted interview with Mariame Kaba on Beyond Prisons. In M. Kaba (Ed.), We Do This 'til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transformative Justice (pp. 26–29). Haymarket Books.
Wilson, K. (2020). "From the Vaughn Uprising: For a Safer, More Secure, and More Humane Prison." In Making Abolitionist Worlds: Proposals for a World on Fire. Common Notions.
Selected Publications
PUBLIC SPEAKING
“Hope Realized” A Talk at The University of Colorado, Boulder. March 2025
"We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition" Socialism Conference, Chicago · September 2024
"Abolitionist Praxis in Prison Education" American Studies Association Conference · 2023
"Decarceral Communities and Legacies of Abolition" Keynote, DePaul Graduate Conference · February 2022
"How We Work Matters: Reflections from a Burned Out Organizer" DecARcerate, Little Rock, AR · 2022
"Abolitionists' Framings of the Chauvin Trial" Prescott College · March 2021
"Free Mumia Student Panel" Haverford College · April 2021
"A Conversation on Prison Abolition: A Path Towards Racial Justice and Health Equity" Georgetown University School of Medicine · Spring 2021
“Getting the Word Out: Supporting Incarcerated People and their Loved Ones" Loyola Marymount University· 2020-2021
"The World After the Pandemic" Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts, Slovakia · May 2021
“Imprisoned Intellectuals” Keynote, NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study, Prison Education Program (Wallkill Correctional Facility) · Spring 2019
"Prison Abolition and Black Feminisms" Haverford College · Spring 2019
“Working at the Intersection of Mad, Disability, and Carceral Studies” Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy · Fall 2017
"Prison Abolition and the State of Black Men" Southern Illinois University · Spring 2015
“10 Key Points: The Prison Theory Working Group” Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy - Fall 2014
Kim has been an invited speaker, keynote, and workshop facilitator at universities, conferences, and community organizations across the country, addressing prison abolition, gender justice, transformative justice, and the future of decarceral communities.
Selected Talks and Presentations
ORGANIZING AND SERVICE
Kim’s advocacy work focuses on prisoner support and release. She’s organized many community education efforts and art workshops over the years including the “Incarcerated Parents Story Circle,” the “Prisoner Support Guide for the Corona Crisis,” and the virtual panel “Why Physical Mail in Prison Matters.” She was a founding member of The Prison Theory Working Group, a member of the Abolition Journal Collective, and a member of the Transformative Justice Practitioners’ Circle.
Her academic service includes chairing or being a member of a number of committees throughout her career, and serving in faculty and program leadership roles. She’s led service learning experiences, and served as a faculty mentor and advisor for undergraduate and graduate students.