About

Penned is a podcast I decided to start when I picked up my brother from the Portland greyhound bus station in late 2016. It was a grey November morning and the first morning in 5 years that he stepped foot onto a surface that wasn’t a part of a prison. Among his belongings, which were carried in three black garbage bags, two of them were filled with letters from strangers. The letters were responses from people nationally and internationally, who were compelled to write after seeing his profile online.

This is typically done through a third-party subscription service that allows inmates to create an online personal ad on paper and pay to have it transcribed or have someone from the outside post an ad to Craigslist or another free website.

I inherited the bags of letters and read through each one of them multiple times over the course of a long weekend. What I found through the majority of them was a complete soul-bearing rawness that I haven’t witnessed before. It was the kind of vulnerability, from both sides, that comes with the need for deep human connection. It was beautiful and I wanted to understand more.

I categorized the letters by author and began to write questions down, as if I was going to interview each person. Thus, Penned was born.

This podcast is a way to begin peeling back layers of judgement and seeing someone for who they are; finding humanity in an area of society where humanity is lost.