NEW YORK (AP) — Martha Stewart has been ordered to serve her sentence for lying about a stock sale at the federal prison in Alderson, W.Va.

Stewart had asked to serve her five-month sentence at the federal prison in Danbury, Conn., close to her 90-year-old mother and her home in Westport, or as a second choice at the federal prison in Coleman, Fla.

But a source, speaking to the AP on condition of anonymity, said Wednesday that the federal Bureau of Prisons had instead chosen Alderson, a minimum-security women's prison that houses about 1,000 inmates.

Stewart issued a statement confirming the Alderson selection. She repeated that she had hoped to be designated to a "facility closer to my family and more accessible to my appellate attorneys." But she said she was pleased she was assigned so quickly, and noted Alderson was the first federal prison camp for women in the United States.

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"I look forward to getting this behind me and to vigorously pursuing my appeal," she said.

Dan Dunne, a spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons, declined to comment on the decision.

Stewart and stockbroker Peter Bacanovic were convicted in March of lying about why she sold ImClone Systems Inc. stock in 2001.

Both are appealing, but Stewart said Sept. 15 that she would go to prison anyway to put the "nightmare" behind her. A judge then set an Oct. 8 deadline for her to report.

The West Virginia prison, nicknamed Camp Cupcake, opened in 1927. The facility is set on a hill in a rural area. There are no metal fences surrounding the camp. Inmates have fixed schedules and must work, but free time can be spent playing volleyball, softball or tennis, or doing aerobics.

Billie Holiday, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a member of the Manson family who tried to shoot President Ford, and Sara Jane Moore, who also tried to kill Ford, are among the facility's alumnae.

Alderson was chosen largely because of its remote location, the source told the AP. There was a concern that the Connecticut and Florida prisons were too accessible to the media, the source said.

Those prisons also had more serious overcrowding issues, the source said. The Coleman prison, for example, is crowded with inmates moved from other Florida prisons because of the recent hurricanes in that state.