City Lights to Publish Abu-Jamal

by Matthew Thornton -- Publishers Weekly, 5/2/2008 9:37:00 AM

San Francisco-based publisher City Lights, known for its titles on social and political issues, has acquired world English rights to a new book by Mumia Abu-Jamal titled Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the U.S.A. Editor Greg Ruggiero made the deal with Frances Goldin. In the book, the author, who has been on death row for 25 years for a murder he denies committing, will look at the struggles of men and women learning, teaching and practicing law from the inside of American prisons.

Abu-Jamal, a journalist and activist whose conviction has been a rallying point for death penalty opponents—many of whom have criticized his case as politically and racially motivated—has made headlines again this week with the publication of The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal. In the new book, published by Chicago Review Press, author J. Patrick O’Connor accuses another man, now deceased, of the murder. Abu-Jamal has published several books during his imprisonment, the most well-known of which is 1995’s Live from Death Row; pub date for Jailhouse Lawyers is February 2009.