Orange is the New Black's Piper Kerman opens up about the catharsis of prison memoirs

An interview with the prisoner-turned-author

Piper Kerman
(Image credit: (Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Netflix))

It's been five years since Piper Kerman's riveting memoir, Orange is the New Black, first transfixed readers and catapulted the unlikely prisoner and her fellow inmates at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut, into the spotlight. Since then, Kerman's story has been adapted into an immensely popular Netflix series. And Kerman has become a leading voice in the call for prison reforms and fair and proportionate sentencing.

Thanks to the popularity of both the book and the show, most people know Kerman's back story: Fresh out of college in 1993, she briefly followed a girlfriend into a drug-smuggling ring, which took her to Bali, Zurich, and ultimately Danbury; after being named as part of the ring in 1998, she negotiated a deal with the government and pleaded guilty to money laundering. She was sentenced to 15 months, but didn't start serving time until 2004 (her sentence was shortened to 13 months, and she was released in March 2005).

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.