Mitchell Simms, a Detroit native, has a new book out that attempts to humanize women prisoners through storytelling. Inspired by a story she wrote about women convicts for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Address: House of Corrections is a book that gives voice to the plight of her own Grandmother:

But what Mitchell Simms didn’t know then and later learned was that her own grandmother had spent three years in prison for forgery. After her release, she began working for Chrysler as an upholstery seamstress.

She now stars in Mitchell Simms’ close-to-home tale of Merry Paine, a 32-year-old ex-con and recovering addict who arrives in Detroit as a girl in 1947, four years after ...