'When you get to prison, if you've never been locked up before, there's this incredibly steep learning curve. It was a time to ready myself, in a strange way, and so when I did walk through prison gates in 2004, I was really ready to get it over with.' But it was a time to really ponder and really think about what I had done and those consequences that I was going to be facing. And that was a really difficult, difficult time. 'The interesting thing about my case, which is so different from the vast majority of folks who are working their way through the criminal justice system, is that I had this close to six-year delay between learning that I would go to prison and actually walking through prison gates. In 2014 she was awarded the Justice Trailblazer Award from John Jay College’s Center on Media, Crime & Justice and the Constitutional Commentary Award from The Constitution Project the Equal Justice Initiative recognized Piper as a Champion of Justice in 2015.On the stretch of time between finding out she could go to prison and actually going there

Piper has spoken at the White House on re-entry and employment to help honor Champions of Change in the field, as well as the importance of arts in prisons and the unique conditions for women in the criminal justice system. Senate Governmental Affairs and Homeland Security Committee to testify about the federal Bureau of Prisons. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights to testify on solitary confinement and women prisoners, and by the U.S. She has been called as a witness by the U.S. Piper collaborates with nonprofits, philanthropies, and other organizations working in the public interest and serves on the board of directors of the Women’s Prison Association and the advisory boards of the PEN America Writing For Justice Fellowship, InsideOUT Writers, Healing Broken Circles and JustLeadershipUSA. The book has been adapted by Jenji Kohan into an Emmy Award-winning original series for Netflix. Piper Kerman is the author of the memoir Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison from Spiegel & Grau.

Piper kerman memoir