The "New Chapters" creative-writing competition for prisoners at the Otago Corrections Facility is in full swing.
Entries close in a month, when judges Becky Manawatu, Emer Lyons and Liam McIlvanney will choose their winners.
Entrants only have to look to a couple of high-profile former inmates who found solace in literature.
"Once I started reading, it completely changed my world," he told the Otago Daily Times.
"I could live all these different experiences so far beyond my reality."
Arthur Taylor’s reading occasionally strayed to the novels of John Grisham and Stephen King but he quickly became immersed in the law and its intricacies.
He recounted being given a legal text book by another inmate when it clicked.
"I couldn’t put it down," Mr Taylor said.
As someone deemed high risk by Corrections, he spent stretches in solitary confinement when reading was his crutch.
"It was something that used to keep me sane," he said.
Dr Wood, who was released from prison in 2006 after serving 11 years, had dropped out of school in third form and did not consider himself an intellectual.
He was lucky he had the support of his father, who would scour charity sales and school fairs for novels, which would then be passed on during visits.
Dr Wood recalled reading The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and falling in love with the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky.
"That gritty Russian realism — it made me realise that life was better than I assumed. It gave me gratitude and appreciation for things," he said.
Dr Wood would read with a dictionary beside him and as his comprehension grew, so did his appetite for books.
He moved on to the "mind-expanding" magical-realism of Haruki Murakami, and took the plunge into academia.
A PhD in psychology, which he attained in 2011, was not the immediate goal.
Dr Wood said he simply studied topics that had sparked his interest, and with time on his hands and an inquiring mind, he was able to follow it through.
His first book How to Escape Prison was released in 2019 and his next Mental Fitness comes out in June.
"New Chapters" entrants have a limit of 600 words and prizes will be awarded for both short stories and poetry at the end of May.
