Phill and I connected over a post he wrote about TextBehind. I quickly realized that Phill is a brilliant writer, thinker, and poet, which is why I asked him to write a collection of poetry for BleakHouse. He’s also one of the co-authors of a bill giving qualifying lifers a second chance. He’s also the former editor of the longest-running prison periodical in North Carolina, The Nash News.
Phill now has his own website, run by a third party: https://phillipvancesmith2.com/. Please visit for his most up-to-date writings and blog posts.
Books
- LIFE: Learning Instructions For Everyone…in prison & out, BleakHouse Publishing, 2024
- Ambitious, Butterscotch Publishing Inc., 2018
- Cage, Butterscotch Publishing Inc., 2014
Essays
- Read Phill’s amazing Substack here: Prison Life Unlocked
- “What It’s Like to Experience the U.S. Election from Prison,” Zócalo Public Square, Aug. 19, 2024
- “On His Way Out, North Carolina Governor Expands Support for People Leaving Prison,” Bolts, July 17, 2024
- “Streaming Behind Bars,” Film Comment, Apr. 22, 2024
- “I’ve Been Incarcerated for 22 Years — and I’ve Never Seen Prisons This Out of Control,” HuffPost, Apr. 10, 2024
- “My Girlfriend and I Used to Rely on Weekly Letters to Communicate. Then, ‘Texting’ Came to My Prison,” Slate, Dec. 13, 2023
- “A Weekend in the Hills,” Inside Knowledge: Incarcerated People on the Failures of the American Prison, ed. by Doran Larson, NYU Press, Jan. 2024
- “Unstructured: A Story of Injustice in North Carolina Prisons,” Exchange, Issue 3, Columbia University School of the Arts
- “Prison Reform Proposal Would Promote Safer Prisons and Safer Communities,” co-written with Timothy W. Johnson, NC Newsline, July 17, 2023
- “Lost in Transit: Digitization of Mail Expands Surveillance Beyond Prison,” Logic(s) Magazine, Issue 19
- “What’s It Like to be an Editor of a Prison Newspaper?,” JSTOR Daily, Nov. 10, 2022
- “What to the Lifer is Prison Reform?,” Tacenda Literary Magazine, 2022
- “Hope for the Hopeless: The Prison Resources Repurposing Act,” The North Carolina Law Review, May 2022
- “The Cost of Communication: NC Prisons Extort Familes to Pay for Mail,” Decarcerate Now NC (ACLU of NC Coalition), Apr. 22, 2022
- “The Harms of TextBehind,” Emancipate NC, Mar. 29, 2022
- “Living the ‘Black-American’ Dream,” Walk in Those Shoes, Feb. 20, 2022
- “A Dream Delayed, But Not Deferred,” Prison Journalism Project, Jan. 10, 2022
- “A New Day,” The Humanist, July/Aug. 2018
- “Seeing the Pieces of Me,” Spring Hope Enterprise, Jun 14, 2018
- “A Warm Embrace,” The Humanist, Nov./Dec. 2017
Poetry
- “Lifer,” Tacenda Literary Magazine, 2022
- “What is Prison Really Like?,” Walk in Those Shoes, June 13, 2022
- “The Inheritance,” Walk in Those Shoes, Oct. 18, 2021
Speaking
- “The Prison Newspaper,” Criminal podcast, July 7, 2023
- “Phillip Vance Smith, II: Advocating for Yourself in Prison,” Prison POD podcast, July 6, 2023
Posts about Phill
- “Why I Talk to Phil: What a Man Doing Life without Parole Teaches Me” by Jake Orlowitz, Apr. 10, 2024
- Review of LIFE: Learning Instructions for Everyone…in prison & out by David Cecelski, Feb. 20, 2024
Kat Bodrie - Writer & Editor 