This event is part of the 2023 Season of Festival of Ideas hosted by the College of Liberal Arts. It will be a roundtable conversation facilitated by Dr. Jaya Davis, professor and interim Chair of the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice and featuring Ms. Brittany K. Barnett, author of A Knock at Midnight: A Story of Hope, Justice, and Freedom (2020), Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist and NAACP Image Award Nominee and founder of Girls Embracing Mothers (https://girlsembracingmothers.org/). During her family’s own struggles with addiction and incarceration Ms. Barnett longed for an organization to provide support to girls whose mothers are incarcerated. Finding little support she created GEM, “to fulfill the meaning of their own creation by using their stumbling blocks as stepping stones for a brighter tomorrow.”