Indies Introduce Q&A with Eric King

Eric King is the author of A Clean Hell: Anarchy and Abolition in America’s Most Notorious Dungeon, a Winter/Spring 2026 Indies Introduce selection. 

Ambir Moore of The Book Lovers Era in Hill Air Force Base, Utah, served on the panel that selected King’s book for Indies Introduce.

“Raw, heartbreaking, and unflinching — A Clean Hell exposes the hidden torment inside America’s supermax prisons. Eric’s story is more than survival; it’s a wake-up call. A Clean Hell pulls you into the harrowing reality of life inside one of America’s most notorious supermax prisons. Through Eric’s story, you’ll witness the unimaginable torture, isolation, and fear he endured — an experience that is as heartbreaking as it is eye-opening. Gripping and timely, this book is a powerful reminder of the hidden truths within our justice system and a must-read for today’s world,” said Moore.

King sat down with Moore to discuss his debut title. This is a transcript of their discussion. You can listen to the interview on the ABA podcast, BookED.

Ambir Moore: Hi everyone, my name is Ambir. I am the owner of The Book Lovers Era here in Utah. Today we’re welcoming Eric King. He is the author of A Clean Hell, and I am so excited to have a discussion today with him.

Eric King is an anarchist who was imprisoned in 2014 for acts of solidarity with the Ferguson, Missouri, uprising. While in federal custody Eric was indicted for a self-defense incident at FCI-Florence. Eric took it to trial and is one of the absolute few people to ever win at Federal Trial. After his victory Eric was sent to the Federal Supermax, ADX, where he spent most of his final two years of his prison bid. During his time in prison Eric coedited the political prisoner anthology Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners. Eric survived years of documented physical and psychological torture and made it out of prison with heart and soul intact. Eric is an activist, antifascist, and loving father and husband. He lives in Denver, Colorado.

Welcome Eric!

Eric King: Yay! Glad to be here, yay!

AM: I was part of the Indies Introduce panel, and A Clean Hell was actually the first book I picked up when I started reading and I absolutely loved it. I didn’t want to stop reading.

Coming from someone who [understands what it’s like] to have family members that have been in prison, I would love to listen to your take on it and discuss the book. What motivated you to share your personal experience in A Clean Hell?

EK: Something that motivated me was the fact that these stories are not out there. There are no books documenting what it’s like to go to federal trial and win, especially [one that includes] the bad parts about the exhaustion and the mental drain it takes on you and on your family.

There is absolutely nothing about ADX, which is a prison that is infamous for holding all these wild people like El Chapo and the Unabomber. The only information that’s out about it is what the government has put out. Having both of these unique experiences together, it felt almost negligent not to talk about it, not to give people an opportunity to learn. Also, it was good therapy for me; I’ve got a lot of trauma, I’ve got a lot of stuff I need to cry out.

AM: Yeah, it was really something that brought me in. It was a story I haven’t heard yet, you know? I didn’t even know this place existed, or everything you went through to go to that trial. Your experience at ADX was something you don’t normally get to see. As you were writing this book, how did revisiting those experiences shape the way you understand that chapter of your life now?

EK: The book, as I kind of alluded to, was big therapy for me. Right now, in my day-to-day life, I have a lot of trauma. There are still things that affect me. I’m still on lots of medicine right now, for mood stabilizing and depression and stuff like that.

When you’re writing a book that’s so vulnerable, it opens up those scars and helps you conceptualize; like the reason I’m so sad right now is because I got sexually assaulted. The reason why I can’t have people touch me is because I did all these years of segregation. These things take a physical toll, and you don’t always realize it until you open up those wounds and start trying to heal them. That’s what this book did for me.

AM: When it comes to your mental health, that had to play such a major part to how your family dealt with it, how you dealt with it. Being able to write it down and revisit those times and just relive it, it had to be healing, but it also had to be like, “Man, this is something that everyone should see, so they can understand.” How did you push to get over that hill?

EK: Lots of crying. Because I was telling other people’s stories as well, it felt like I was doing a community service, like I was fighting for those who will never be heard. That helped me a lot. I’m not just trying to raise up myself and my ego. I’m raising up others. That helps you work through a lot of the hard stuff, because sometimes it’s easier to fight for others than yourself.

AM: It is.

EK: When other people see your story, it legitimizes it, it makes it feel real. Now I’m seen, I don’t have to gaslight myself, like, “Did this actually happen? Am I being a baby? Am I overreacting?” It gave me and my family a chance to be seen, to be heard, because it happened to them too. They went years and years without seeing me or talking to me, and I exist in their trauma as well.

AM: Like you said, you did highlight a lot of the lives and experiences of the people that you came across in the facilities. Did having those relationships and stories shape what you wanted people to understand about your life when you were in prison at the time?

EK: Yeah, it was really important for me to understand that I’m not unique; the other men that are there just haven’t been given a platform, or they’ve been so buried that there’s no way for them to get their stories out.

Being able to tell the stories of people that have been there for 10, 15, 20 years, that you will never hear of…these men that I met had such big hearts and such devastating stories, and I didn’t want them to be defined by what the prison determined to be their worst act. I wanted them to be defined as humans that have hearts and empathetic lives. I wanted people to see them that way.

Going over their stories really shaped the way I formed the book, because there’s more to this world than just me, and there’s more people that have better stories than mine, and they deserve that just as much as I do, if not more.

AM: Yes, I really liked that a lot. Seeing the different places you went and how you interacted with different people based on the level of max in the prison, like how when you were at more of a maximum at ADX, you couldn’t really communicate as much, versus somewhere where you were able to actually have that little bit of interaction with certain people.

Again, you told their stories and got readers to look into their lives and say, “Okay, so this is not just a one person thing. There are other people going through that also.

I really loved that about [the book].

EK: Thank you!

AM: The first one was the healthcare system and how the healthcare system is in the prisons. You hear about it in the world, but you don’t think how bad it could get or the illnesses that can happen [in prison]. I love how you brought that to light.

When readers finish A Clean Hell, what would you hope stays with them? What do you want them to feel, emotionally, intellectually, or even how they see the world afterwards?

EK: Yeah! I included the healthcare stuff because so often I hear this ignorant thing, “Oh, people go to prison just to get the free healthcare. People go just get free food.” It’s such a devastatingly horrible thing to say to diminish people to that level that they’re willing to face massive amounts of repression and potential death in prison. I hate that they think that that world exists.

I hope people read this book and take from it that there are humans inside. Not monsters, not animals, there are people that have families. Your grandfather, your brother, your sister, your mom, is just one bad government action away from being locked up. We don’t know what’s going to be illegal tomorrow. We don’t know what can happen to any of us.

Those people inside are someone’s family, and they should be treated the same way you’d want your family to be treated. You would want your grandfather to be treated with love and have medical care and to be spoken to like a human and to have access to you, to other family, to friends. If you want that for your grandfather, then it only makes sense that you would want that for someone else’s.

I hope people can take from this book that we should never define someone by what is considered their worst moment — that they have a lack of impulse, they have a moment of rage, they have a moment of devastation, of depression, or something comes from a socio-economic lack of opportunity that leads you to this place that you didn’t ask to be but that society determined you to be.

We should never just look at someone in that moment and say, “That’s who you are, and you deserve vengeance upon you.” We should never do that. If that’s the way we’re going to view society, then that’s not a society I want to be a part of. I hope that these stories — these hurts and pains — can influence people to have more empathy with those inside, as opposed to the “do the crime, you do the time” mentality that serves nobody.

AM: Absolutely. That’s one hundred percent real, especially with the state of today’s world. Having a lock in for banned books, like just that simple act could end with us behind bars. You never know what can trigger that moment. Like you said, everyone’s human; you’re just trying to make it better, trying to make the best out of it.

Your story highlights the power of the community. You talk about how your family and the people who were there to support you, even when you were going to trial. [You also talk about] the gaps that people face [when leaving prison], transitioning back into your household, you haven’t been around your kids, you said you don’t want people to touch you because it’s triggering. What changes do you hope to see in how we support people coming from incarceration?

EK: Every answer I have is lead with empathy. We overlook things. We think when people get out of prison it’s gonna be the best day of their life; all of a sudden, you’re free, and you could do everything. You could go eat pizza and do this. People forget the mental health aspect [of being released from prison], that is a cripplingly terrifying experience. We forget that people need towels, socks, shoes, a phone, headphones. We forget that people need things to survive that you can’t just get when released from prison and all of a sudden, everything’s good.

I would like for people to understand that if we want to heal society, if we want to have a community that allows for people to grow, then we need to be there for those that are coming out of these horrible circumstances. It has to be tangible help. It can’t just be “Good luck!” It has to be “Good luck, here’s access to a doctor. Good luck, here are some socks.” If we’re not going to provide that stuff, then we’re just creating a pathway for people to go right back inside.

AM: I really hope that we could figure out a way to make it better, because the whole thing is to get them to reintegrate into society, and if you are not giving them the proper tools to do it, then what are we doing?

EK: Exactly.

AM: This book is an amazing read. You’re one of the few to win against the federal government, which is an amazing thing because I’ve seen a lot of people go up against them and not come back with anything tangible or anything remotely decent. When you went up against [the federal government], were there any thoughts of, “Okay, if I don’t win, what happens next?”

EK: One thing I was first to do is write a book about it. When you’re facing trial, what happens is the prosecutors often bully you with plea deals and threats, like “We’ll give you this, and if you don’t [agree], we’re going to do this and this.” It’s coercion. They’re trying to force you into taking a plea deal to admit you did something wrong. In my case, the plea deal was essentially twenty years. Twenty years for self-defense. I could not allow myself to accept that, and they did everything possible [to convince me]. The prison tries to bully you into taking the plea deal because they want you out of there. The prosecutors do it. Your lawyers do it. Lawyers will try to push you because they don’t want to go to trial.

That takes a lot of time, a lot of money, and so I never had a second thought about [going up against the federal government] because I wasn’t wrong. No one has the right to hurt us, even if they’re a Federal Bureau of Prisons official, and thankfully I had my family, my wife. She was brave, she believed in me, and she said, “If you want to do it, let’s do it and let’s give it our all.” I even took the stand on my own behalf, and I got to talk to the jury and explain to them how, even though I’m a prisoner, I’m still human, and you don’t get to abuse me. I got to explain why I hate prison guards.

This jury heard it and agreed with it. They agreed like, “Yeah, you did have a right to fight back.” And that’s unbelievable that that could ever happen and it was through self-belief it was also terrifying. It wasn’t linear, it’s a circle. We’re gonna win, I’m screwed, we’re gonna win, I’m screwed.

I hope it encourages people to stand up to them more. We don’t have to let them bully us into every plea deal when it’s not always true, when it’s not honest, when it’s not decent. They don’t have the same rules we have. Sometimes we have to fight back and make them earn it. If you’re going to give me this time, earn this time. When you fight back against bullies, they often back down, and sometimes you win.

AM: Thank you so much for coming with us. Your release date is coming soon, and we’re really excited about it. What do you want to tell booksellers when it comes to selling your book and the people you want this book to reach? Is there anything you want to tell them about [handselling] this book?

EK: Yeah! I intentionally reached out and wrote about lots of groups of people. I wrote about disenfranchised Black communities. I wrote about trans people inside prison. I wrote about these stories that have never been heard. I would like booksellers to keep in mind that that’s the audience. The audience is people who might not ever think about prison, but who might also have family, friends, or comrades going to prison. I would like for booksellers to think about the fact that we’ve got the market cornered; there are not other books about these topics and that’s important to remember.

Luigi [Mangione] is going to go to prison soon. He is going to ADX. Nicolás Maduro, the ex-leader of Venezuela. He is going to go to ADX.

There are no other books that will talk about this, but mine does, and it does from a place of empathy and from understanding, as opposed to a very dull, boring academic way. No one’s trying to read a textbook about prison, but they might be wanting to hear the heart and soul and bones behind it, and that’s what I would forcefully push on booksellers. Sell the empathy. Check it out.

AM: Sell the empathy. Thank you again for talking with me. I’m really excited to sell this one. I already have [it] on order for my store. Thank you, we can’t wait to see what you do further on. Good luck to you.

EK: Thank you so much. Please write prisoners. Please write someone inside. They need love!

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A Clean Hell: Anarchy and Abolition in America’s Most Notorious Dungeon by Eric King (PM Press, 9798887441597, Paperback, Memoir, $22.95, On Sale: 01/20/26)

You can learn more about this author on the PM Press website.