American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) introduced a new holiday outreach initiative, Stories for Christmas 2014, at the group’s annual conference in September in St. Louis.

Stories for Christmas is helping provide “hope-giving reading material” for men and women behind bars through Christian Library International, according to an ACFW statement.

Through Stories for Christmas, ACFW members have contributed several hundred current novels and novellas to Christian Library International. Children’s fiction also was included as select prisons videotape the incarcerated reading to their children in an effort to keep family relationships intact even when a parent is behind bars.

Some authors donated their own books, and many ACFW conference attendees purchased additional copies in the conference bookstore to contribute to the outreach initiative.

“It was an honor for ACFW to offer reading material that will not only entertain, but offer the hope of Jesus Christ, forgiveness and examples of how faith shows up in tough circumstances,” said ACFW CEO Colleen Coble. “Our prayer is that the love of Christ will be evident not only through the gift of these books, but within their pages.”

Christian Library International serves adult and youth prison inmates by providing Christian books and other materials to prisons, jails and youth detention centers. The materials are shipped directly to chaplains who distribute them by means of a lending library, a book cart or by personally giving them to the inmates.

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