Boris Franklin, the author of The Poetic Side of a Man’s Mind, served 11 years in prison from 2004 to 2015. He is currently a junior at Rutgers University pursuing a bachelors degree in psychology with a minor in sociology. He sits on the board of the New Jersey Prison Reentry Program as well as The Mountain View Community Student Advisory Board. He is a visiting fellow at the Global Center for Advance studies, a nonprofit educational and research institution located in Brooklyn, New York.

Boris is also the Senior Advisor of the Mentors at Newark’s Eastside High school’s TDA’s Parole to College program. He is a lead writer of the play “Caged,” which was written inside of East Jersey State Prison by 28 inmates. This thought-provoking play originated in an Urban History class taught inside the maximum security prison by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and New York Times best-selling author Chris Hedges. 

Since Boris’s release in spring 2015, Boris and Chris have gone on an unprecedented journey which led to the play “Caged” being scheduled to perform in the Passage Theater in Trenton, New Jersey in spring 2018. The play has attracted the attention of social justice advocates such as Michelle Alexandra and Alice Walker. This journey has also led to a documentary which follows Boris and Chris from the gates of Northern State Prison to the prestigious Harvard Club in New York, where along the way the two, pupil and professor, form a lifetime friendship. 

While serving his time in East Jersey State Prison, Boris was the assistant director of the New Direction Program, a program which focuses on addiction and HIV/Aids awareness. His duties included facilitating groups and training new facilitators. In December 2012, Boris enrolled in the New Jersey Step Program, a higher education program that works in partnership with the Department of Corrections and State Parole Board. Upon his release, he attended Middlesex County College before being admitted into the Mountain View Community (the final step in the NJ Step Program) at Rutgers New Brunswick. 

Since he began his education at Rutgers, Boris has advocated for prison reform and social justice. He has spoken publicly at many events in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania during the 2016 Democracy Rise Convention. Boris has done speaking engagements at several academic institutions including the Queensboro Community College, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, College of New York,  Rutgers Newark, Rutgers New Brunswick, Kutztown University, and Princeton University on issues ranging from education to mass incarceration.