“Women on the Inside” was a Humanities Iowa grant-funded project, directed by Rachel Williams, that provided an opportunity for women who were incarcerated at the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women (ICIW) in Mitchellville, Iowa, to create works of autobiographical and creative writings.

In collaboration with Humanities Iowa, Prairie Lights Book Store, the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women, papermaking artist Matt Hopkins Walker, Liz Voss, Amy Love, Paul Ingram, and the University of Iowa, Assistant Professor of Art Education Rachel Williams facilitated the Women on the Inside group at the ICIW from 2002 to 2010.

Starting in 2002, the women who participated in the group spent time reading literature and poetry by women writers as well as sharing and critiquing the works of other group members. From 2002 to 2004, these women wrote from their varied experiences, thoughts, and feelings to publish a collection of short stories titled “Women on the Inside.” Published along with color illustrations and a compact disc containing audio recordings of selections from the book read by the authors in 2006, “Women on the Inside” presented a reflection of their experiences of womanhood, the power of literature, and the necessity for everyone to tell their own story. As an extension of the Women on the Inside project, some of the women also wrote diaries. The diaries, written from 2009 to 2010, make up the Women on the Inside papers.