corrections in ink a memoir by keri blakinger

After release she was able to finish her bachelor’s degree at Cornell and start working in journalism, first for the Ithaca Journal and eventually for The Marshall Project. She managed to get substance-free while on the inside and she is very clear - that happened in spite of her incarceration, not because of it. For a book that deals with heavy subject matter of substance use disorder, eating disorders, sexual assault, and incarceration, Blakinger’s is a happy ending, as she writes, “Everybody should get the second chances I got, but most people do not.” That’s the jumping off point for a book that pulls on threads from her early life and post-prison career, all braided together with her writing about life on the inside. The story was picked up outside of Ithaca and it made the news in eastern Pennsylvania, where Blakinger had grown up. Her mugshot made the local news - Ivy League student arrested with $150,000 worth of heroin. After pulling on some unlaundered clothes and heading out, she was arrested with a Tupperware container of heroin on her. At the time, she was a student at Cornell University, dealing with an overwhelming heroin problem, plus all the other problems that a college student might face, like not having any clean clothes and needing yet another extension on a paper which was long overdue. Martin’s Press, 2022), she candidly interrogates her own struggles, her incarceration and her journey to becoming a relentless watchdog.īlakinger opens her memoir by writing about the morning of her arrest in December of 2010.

After her release, Blakinger became a journalist, worked for the Houston Chronicle and the Marshall Project and has just signed on with the Los Angeles Times. Journalist and writer Keri Blakinger spent about two years behind bars, serving time on drug charges in both jails and prisons in the state of New York.

Corrections in ink a memoir by keri blakinger