I started Brick of Gold Publishing in 2016. I was sick of getting rejections from major publishers, and wanted to put my work out. So instead of begging for a book deal, I said fuck it, I’ll do it myself. I wanted validation as a writer. It was, in this way, a completely vain pursuit.

Soon, my friend Ray started sending me stuff to read. Ray and I have known each other since childhood, gone through the phases of life together, as cooks, coaches, and rappers (him, not me — he is going to kill me for saying that), but our most common ground was as writers. But the writing Ray was sending now wasn’t his. Ray had entered a new phase. He was teaching writing classes in prisons in California and the work he was sending was from the prisoners. I knew immediately I was going to stop publishing myself, and start publishing them. After receiving rejections from other peoples’ publishing companies for years, I rejected myself.

I wish I could say the pursuit was born from a great passion for criminal justice and prison reform. I would be a better person if that were true. But it honestly came more from a passion for art. The work Ray sent was simply more compelling than what professional writers were producing, myself included, more compelling than anything I had ever read. It was more real. More personal. More stylish. So I committed myself to reading, editing, and publishing an ever-increasing stream of work coming across the country from Ray in LA to me in New York. We put our first two books out in 2018.

In November, we will release our third book with Words Uncaged, the organization Ray works for. It is by far our best. It is a collection of art and writing from a group of men in Calipatria State Prison near the Mexican border. The book consists entirely of scans of original art and artifacts from Calipatria — drawings, letters, birthday cards, and amazing photographs by another one of our childhood friends, filmmaker Danny Dwyer. Triboro Designs designed the book. They did Prince’s autobiography, The Beautiful Ones. I hit them up on Instagram, and they were kind enough to take a job from a much smaller publishing company, us. I still don’t know why they said yes. I suspect they, like me, saw the work and knew it was important.

I am by now many thousands of hours and dollars in the hole. But I don’t care. It is one of the great honors of my life to publish this work. I have never met any of the artists or authors in our books, but they have taught me so much. And I thank them. Many have done years in solitary confinement in the most violent institutions in the California prison system. They have found love somehow in a world that has given them only cruelty.

I am happy to make these men what I am not: a published author. It is a small price to repay for what they have given me, a reminder of what happens when we stop doing for ourselves, and start doing for others.

You can order your copy of 128-G from Brick of Gold. Profits go to Words Uncaged, which facilitates art, narrative therapy and new media workshops throughout the state correctional system in California. They work collaboratively with artists that are in captivity to shift the narratives that surround mass incarceration.​