Piper Kerman

What's the goal of prison, and what kinds of punishments work and don't work within the prison system?

Piper Kerman was on the Leonard Lopate Show recently to talk about her memoir, Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison. It's the basis of the new Netflix series. She also told us she's been reading and watching recently!

Piper Kerman talks about being sentenced to 15 months at a federal correctional facility. She writes about her experience in her memoir Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s P...

When Piper Kerman graduated from Smith College she veered away from the typical middle class lifestyle and chose, for a time, to go a different way. She fell in with a group of charismatic drug smugglers and ended up traveling to fine resorts around the world to help traffic drug money.

An excerpt from Piper Kerman's "Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison."

Chapter One

Are You Gonna Go My Way?

International baggage claim in the Brussels airport was large and airy, with multiple carousels circling endlessly. I scurried from one to another, desperately trying to find my black suitcase. Because it was stuffed with drug money, I was more concerned than one might normally be about lost luggage.