Huntsville, Texas is home to the nation's busiest death chamber ─ a red brick facility, located a scant few blocks away from Sam Houston State University, the home of Texas Review Press.
In Upon This Chessboard of Nights and Days: Voices from Texas Death Row, SHSU students and Texas Review Press offer a rare glimpse of inmates writings and drawings.
"What we wanted to do was give them an outlet for their work, for their expression. We wanted to know what it was like, day-to-day, living on death row,"─Paul Ruffin, director, Texas Review Press
In a recent interview with Voice of America, a student editor, Paula Khalaf said she was deeply touched by reading the stories of men who often grew up in broken homes and who, as one inmate says, "became lost souls as children."
"I have to say I have probably changed my feelings about the death penalty," she said. "Probably, if I had to come down as either for or against it at this point, I would be against it."
See the interview in its entirety:
