In addition to our regular Sunday book packing party, we will have a special session on Saturday, December 10th from 2-4 p.m. We have lots of books to mail before we take a break for the holidays, so join us if you can!

Thanks to our wonderful supporters, we raised over $1,700 for Giving Tuesday! We are so excited to replenish our postage fund with your generous donations. Thank you! Thank you!

This month we sent out over 360 books to incarcerated people in Mississippi! We had several dozen student volunteers from Millsaps College who helped pack, log, and fill book requests. We were glad to see a few new faces and a few of our regulars this month. Thank you for taking time out of your busy holiday schedules to give back to Mississippi’s underserved populations. We couldn’t do this without you!

Thanks to Theresa and Nathan for braving the cold with us for the Clinton Holiday Market. This was our last market of the season, and we thoroughly enjoyed meeting new supporters and spreading the good news of Big House Books!

December marks 8 years of protecting the right to read in Mississippi’s prisons. Big House Books is the only books-to-prisons group in the state of Mississippi, so we are happy to still be going and growing. Come out and celebrate with us at Urban Foxes on Saturday, December 3rd. We will have giveaways, merchandise for sale, and we’ll be taking book and monetary donations. Urban Foxes is also offering a 15% discount to anyone who donates to our postage fund. We hope to see you there!

Help us reach our goal of $2500 this Giving Tuesday. Go to the Donate page on our website and contribute what you can. Every $5 allows us to send one package of books to an incarcerated person in Mississippi.

Another productive month at Big House Books. We sent out over 950 books this month and saw about 40 first-time volunteers!

We were honored to host a number of students from Millsaps College this month. Professor Kristen Golden’s Philosphy of Happiness class joined us at the beginning of the month for three volunteer sessions, where they were able to fill requests, organize our book donations, and pack books to send out. We closed out the month with the guys of the Kappa Alpha and Kappa Sigma fraternities (pictured above), who packed over 250 books at our book packing party!

Thanks to Holly for delivering books to the Walnut Grove Correctional Facility. These books will help stock their prison library, allowing more incarcerated Mississippians to have access to a diverse selection of gently used, up-to-date books for FREE.

Thanks to volunteer groups from Parkway Hill United Methodist Church (pictured above), Millsaps College, and our Thursday book packing parties, we have been able to send 441 packages this month…that’s over 1,300 books to incarcerated people in Mississippi! Woohoo!

We raised over $200 in monetary donations on social media alone. Thanks to all of those who gave!

We were ecstatic to share that all of our book donations were finally shelved. However, that did not last long! Thanks to Lemuria Books and a local group of attorneys, were were able to add more fiction, nonfiction, and legal books to our collection.

Our Program Assistant, Miranda Vaughn, was invited to speak at the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library System for a Banned Books Week program. We appreciate all of our new supporters who attended this presentation. Thanks to the library and to Friendly City Books for including us in your program.

Since the days are getting shorter, we are switching over to our Fall/Winter schedule. Beginning in October, our weekly book packing parties will be Sundays from 12-2 p.m. If you would like hold your own BPP on a different day, contact Miranda to schedule. miranda@bighousebooksms.org

We are grateful for all of the book donations that keep this organization running. However, we have limited space and a limited number of volunteers to sort through donations. Please be kind and only donate books within our guidelines, so our volunteers can remain focused on sending books instead of discarding items we can’t use.

If you have books to donate that meet the criteria above, you may drop them off on Thursdays from 5-7 p.m. Contact Miranda (miranda@bighousebooksms.org) for more information, or to schedule another drop-off time.

August was a busy month for Big House Books!

We returned to the Mississippi Book Festival for the first time since 2019. It was so great to meet fellow book lovers and literacy advocates from all over the state! We received enough donations to send more than 200 packages of books. That’s more than 600 books in the hands of incarcerated Mississippians! Woohoo!!

Our last book packing party of the month saw a record 15 volunteers! Some of these were first-timers and included teens and adults. They filled two carts of requests and sent another four USPS boxes of packages to the post office. We ended the month strong with a total of 510 books sent to Mississippi prisons!

We were able to fit in one last event before the closeout of the month. Thanks to Holly, Vidhi, and Miranda for working the Graphic Teas and Chill Market presented by Magnolia Sunset Markets & Jackson Flea. We received enough donations to cover the postage for an additional 100 books!

August would not have been a success without the help of our amazing volunteers and donors! To those who helped staff our table at events, bought merch, donated money to our postage fund, and to our first-time volunteers and seasoned volunteers — THANK YOU! Your support keeps us going every month. Together, we are changing the lives of Mississippi’s under-served populations.

We sent out over 240 packages this month, and many of those were thanks to a wonderful group of Millsaps students who hosted their own book packing party this month. Thanks to Dr. Stephanie Rolph and long-time BHB volunteer Rachel Glazer for heading up that BPP.

We have also changed our weekly book packing parties to Thursdays from 5-7 p.m. for the remainder of the summer. As always, if you can’t make Thursdays, message us and we can arrange for you to host your own BPP!

Thank you to all who have donated adult coloring books, planners, etc. from our updated Needs List. We have the most generous donors, and I know those we serve appreciate it.

Catch us at the Mississippi Book Festival on August 20th. We’ll have volunteer opportunities for that day, so stay tuned for signup opportunities.

Join us on Thursdays from 5-7 p.m. for the remainder of the summer. We will resume our Sunday parties in the fall. See you there!