A Berkeley Novelist Loses His San Quentin Classroom Over an Escape Plot

Bill Smoot, a Berkeley writer who taught literature as a volunteer at San Quentin for fourteen years, lost his access to the prison, and with it his teaching post, over his first novel, "San Quentin Exodus." The book alternates between two lives: James, a young man from Oakland whose surrounding poverty contributes to a horrific crime and a sentence of thirty years to life, and Allison, his volunteer tutor, who plots his escape after he is denied parole. Smoot says he was told someone in the prison system was upset about the escape plot, and he reads the decision as the department covering itself. He later learned that no one there had read the novel in full. Jody Lewen, president of Mount Tamalpais College, which runs the education program inside the prison, says Smoot broke the volunteer rules on media access and had been advised against using "San Quentin" in the title. She says he published the book exactly as he wished, knowing what the consequences might be, and is now blaming the college: "We did everything we could to avoid this outcome." Her central argument is that she has spent twenty-five years persuading prison administrators that vetted college instructors will not disregard institutional rules, and that this book confirmed the worst assumption about volunteers. The revocation itself was the prison's decision. San Quentin did not respond to Berkeleyside's request for comment. FIRE has taken up the case as a free expression matter, and Smoot's defenders argue the novel is not an escape manual, since its scenario depends on a highly specific and unlikely combination of circumstances. Smoot holds no grudge against the college and speaks warmly of Lewen's work; he simply wants back in the classroom. In 1968 he was also removed as editor of Purdue University's student paper and reinstated after students and faculty protested. What surprised him is that in 2013 he published an essay about teaching "The Odyssey" to incarcerated men, with San Quentin named in the title, and no one objected. "San Quentin Exodus" is published by Apprentice House Press at 337 pages. Smoot will appear in conversation with New Yorker cartoonist Kate Isenberg at 6 p.m. this Friday, August 21, at the Berkeley Tennis Club. Read more: Smoot's 2013 essay on teaching "The Odyssey" at San Quentin https://www.salon.com/2013/12/21/teaching_the_odyssey_at_san_quentin/

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