Books make up your entire world when you are a prisoner, Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova has written, in support of a campaign to persuade the British government to overturn a policy banning books being sent to prisoners.

She is one of 10 writers, artists and activists who write on Wednesday about the importance of books and reading during their incarceration. Tolokonnikova, who spent 21 months in jail for taking part in a singing protest against Vladimir Putin, writes movingly about the value not only of books, but books that you want to read: "Because you have books, you know that every day you spend behind bars is not a day spent in vain."

Another writer contributing to the campaign is the Belarusian journalist Iryna Khalip, who was detained for criticising her country's regime. She describes being deprived of "decent books" as "torture."

She adds: "When you are free you don't have such a painful desire to read as you have in prison. You can get any book at home, in the shops or from the internet. In prison books become the air. Your body needs air to breathe. No books – you cannot breathe. And if you cannot breathe there is no life."

The writers, from countries including Belarus, Cameroon, Cuba and Uzbekistan, are contributing to a campaign being led by the Howard League for Penal Reform and English PEN to press the government to overturn rules prohibiting families and friends from sending books to prisoners.

New rules came into force in November preventing prisoners from receiving parcels from outside unless they have "exceptional circumstances", such as a medical condition. Books, subscription magazines and clothing are all prohibited.

The letters for the campaign include one by the Nigerian journalist Kunle Ajibade, who spent three and a half years in Makurdi prison – built by British colonialists in the 1930s – a place which "stank of rotten rotten flesh, of excrement, of rat urine". However, it did allow books to be sent in and one of his treasures is a signed copy of Martha Gellhorn's The View from the Ground. He writes: "I bear witness to the therapy that books give in moments of gloom. Why would anyone who truly cares for humanity want to deny a prisoner a mind builder?"

The accounts are being published to coincide with World Books Night, an occasion when English PEN traditionally sends books to international prisoners.

One such prisoner is Cameroonian poet Enoh Meyomesse, who says the books he is sent are like oxygen – "an irreplaceable joy and huge moral support".

He continues: "They have proven to me that, while my biological family has abandoned me, there exists another family – perhaps even more important – a family of literature, a family of novelists and poets like me, which is always beside me and will never abandon me."

Jo Glanville, English PEN's director, said there was huge irony that the organisation sent books to prisoners around the world, yet could not do that in the UK.

She said the letters were "incredibly moving" and the request for them touched a chord with the writers. "It is quite clear that books are a necessity and play a fundamental role to people in prison."

The change in the UK prison rules was first highlighted by the Howard League. Its director, Frances Crook, said some libraries were well stocked but "repeatedly, we find, people are not getting to libraries, so the only way you can get a book is for somebody to send it to you – which is not allowed any more."

Last month writers and artists including the poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, the playwright David Hare and the actors Samuel West and Vanessa Redgrave denounced the ban outside Pentonville prison. In response the justice secretary Chris Grayling wrote an open letter to Duffy, defending the change as a vital security measure to prevent drugs and other contraband getting into prisons.