BCRW: The Barnard Center for Research on Women

About the Contributors

Ann Adalist-Estrin, co-author of Responding to Children and Families of Prisoners—A Community Guide and author of The Children of Prisoners Library, is also Director of the National Resource Center on Children and Families of the Incarcerated (formerly the Federal Resource Center) at Family and Corrections Network. FCN is a 25-year-old organization that addresses the needs of children and families of the incarcerated through publications, training and technical assistance.

asha bandele is, in addition to being an award-winning author, journalist and poet, a former features editor for Essence Magazine. She is currently the Director of the Advocacy Grants Program at the Drug Policy Alliance. She is author of The Prisoner's Wife: A Memoir, Something Like Beautiful: One Single Mother's Story, Daughter, The Subtle Art of Breathing and Absence in the Palms of My Hand. She was a Columbia University Revson Fellow, and she received her B.A. from the New School, and her MFA at Bennington College. Bandele lives in Brooklyn with her daughter, Nisa.

Nell Bernstein is an award-winning journalist, co-coordinator of the San Francisco Children Incarcerated Parents Project, former Soros Justice Media Fellow at the Open Society Institute of New York, and author of, All Alone in the World: Children of the Incarcerated (The New Press, 2005). With Gretchen Newby (Director of the national organization, Friends Outside, in California), Bernstein also wrote the Bill of Rights for Children of Incarcerated Parents.

Stacey Bouchet is a Senior Consultant with the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the author of several reports including, "Children and Families with Incarcerated Parents: Exploring Development in the Field and Opportunities for Growth." Dr. Bouchet earned her doctoral degree in Public Policy from the University of Maryland and serves as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland. Dr. Bouchet was also the child of an incarcerated father.

Creasie Finney Hairston is Professor and Dean of the Jane Addams College of Social Work at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Director of the Jane Addams Center for Social Policy and Research, and Editor of The Journal of Offender Rehabilitation. Dr. Hairston has developed family programs for correctional populations, conducted research, and written extensively on the impact of incarceration on children and families. Her most recent publications examine women's views of men's incarceration, public policies and fathers in prison, and kinship care when parents are incarcerated.

Denise Johnston is co-editor of the now classic Children of Incarcerated Parents, the first book-length study on the topic. She is also the Director of the Center for Children of Incarcerated Parents in California, the organization she co-founded in 1989. The CCIP mission is the prevention of intergenerational crime and incarceration, and the production and documentation of model programs and services for children of criminal offenders and their families.

Tanya Krupat, LMSW, MPH is Program Director at The Osborne Association, New York Initiative for Children of Incarcerated Parents. She has been a Director and Consultant for the Children of Incarcerated Parents Program and the Visiting Improvement Project in the Division of Family Permanency at the Administration for Children's Services, New York's child welfare agency. She has also been a Family Services Coordinator at Taconic Correctional Facility and a Revson Fellow.

Carrie Levy is a photographer. In 2005 Levy published 51 Months, a photographic journal of her father's incarceration and homecoming. Levy attended the MFA program in fine-art photography at London's Royal College of Art and formerly worked as a picture editor for Newsweek magazine. She is currently a Professor of Photography at Parsons, The New School for Design. She is represented by Daniel Cooney Fine Art in New York City.

Venezia Michalsen is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Justice Studies at Montclair State University. Dr. Michalsen received her B.A. from Barnard College, and her Ph.D. from the CUNY Graduate Center. She worked for six years at the Women's Prison Association in New York City, a direct service organization serving women with involvement in the criminal justice system. Her research focuses on women's imprisonment, reentry and desistance, and the children of incarcerated parents.

Dee Ann Newell, 2006-2008 Senior Justice Fellow at the Open Society Institute of the Soros Foundation in New York, has a Master's Degree in Developmental Psychology from Columbia University. She co-founded Arkansas Voices for the Children Left Behind, served as Program Director of Services for Children of Prisoners and Their Families at the Centers for Youth and Families, and has received awards for her commitment to children of prisoners. She co-wrote The Arkansas Legal Handbook for Parents in Prison: Your Rights and Responsibilities, in English and Spanish, and the booklet "What You Need to Know when a Parent has been Arrested or is Absent: A Handbook for Relative Caregivers."

Megan Sullivan, Associate Professor of Rhetoric at Boston University, has written one book, Women in Northern Ireland: Material Conditions and Cultural Studies, (University of Florida Press, 1999), a collection of interviews, Irish Women and Film: 1980-1990, (Nova Southeastern University, 2001), and many articles, essays and reviews. She has also written an unpublished memoir of her childhood experiences of her father's incarceration, as well as the unpublished children's fiction book, Clarissa's Disappointment.

Angie Vachio co-founded PB&J Family Services Inc. in 1972, a non profit agency in New Mexico that serves families with significant challenges including parental incarceration, and served as its Executive Director for 35 years. PB&J has programs based in New Mexico's adult and juvenile correctional systems, serving parents in prison and their children in the community, in addition to serving families with difficult issues such as domestic violence and child abuse. Vachio also was a founding member and continues to serve on the Board of the New Mexico Women's Justice Project, an advocacy group for women and girls in the correctional system. A child and family advocate, she currently serves on the N.M. Sentencing Commission, the N.M. Commission on the Status of Women, the Juvenile Justice Commission, the Early Childhood Council, the Prison Reform Task Force, the Reentry Council, Blue Ribbon Commission on the Welfare of Children of Jailed and Incarcerated Parents, and has served on the N.M. State Parole Board. Angie Vachio has her Masters degree in Special Education, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from UNM for her work on behalf of children and families. She is a frequent lecturer concerning the effects of violence on children and the impact of parental incarceration on children. In 2005, she authored a chapter concerning children of incarcerated parents in About Children: An Authoritative Resource on the State of Childhood Today published by the American Academy of Pediatrics.