Yukari Iwatani Kane

In 2016, Yukari responded to an email about San Quentin News’ need for a journalism instructor to teach the Journalism Guild, a training ground for aspiring reporters inside San Quentin State Prison. The experience was perspective changing and has reminded her every day about why journalism is so important. Her work there led her to co-found the Prison Journalism Project.

Yukari and Shaheen Pasha co-founded the Prison Journalism Project at Penn State University in 2019 as a way to empower the men and women who live behind bars through storytelling and journalism. PJP’s goal is to elevate their voices, so they can be a part of the national conversations about criminal justice. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, they created the Prison Journalism Project publication, which collects stories by people impacted by the criminal justice system about their experience. 

Yukari is an advisor for the San Quentin News, the only prisoner-run newspaper in the country. As the Journalism Guild instructor, Yukari created a curriculum and a reader and taught journalism fundamentals to men who wanted to write for the newspaper but had no experience. She believes that inmates’ voices are more important than ever, and her aspiration for them is to write stories that matter beyond their walls.