Britney Gulley is his legal name, but this female to male transgender inmate is better known as Xandan. He's a political prisoner, activist, and published writer. Xandan Gulley enjoys football, reading, astrology, Greek mythology, women’s basketball, dogs, and listening to NPR. One minuscule tranquility for Xandan is being able to watch the sunrise and sunset every day, out his small window in the 6X9 solitary cell (where he has been a victim of prolonged solitary confinement for over 14 years). Xandan Gulley has been published in the Texas Observer, The Advocate magazine, LGBTQ Nation, San Francisco Bayview newspaper, Prism, and Black Lipstick magazine, and recently won a 2025 Stillwater Award. Naturally down-to-earth with a great sense of humor and contagious smile, Xandan doesn’t allow his dire circumstances to break his soul or dictate his spirit. He loves making people smile and laugh while continuing to bring awareness to the concealed injustices within a flawed prison system. In this episode, you'll hear his story of discrimination, loneliness, strength, and courage living as a Black trans man in a woman's prison in Texas, locked alone in a cell with no human interaction other than phone calls to his mother, and an occasional correctional officer grunting as he passes by the cell door. Through the story he shares, Xandan proves how “a single candle has the power to defy darkness."

Richard Strong was convicted of First-Degree Murder for the 2011 shooting of Ygnacio Bermudez, Jr., on the streets of Lansing, Michigan. Rick, who was sentenced to Life without Parole, claims he was wrongfully convicted of the murder and has polygraph test results to prove it. He admitted, however, that his past history of selling drugs and hanging around the wrong people contributed to his downfall, and he knew he "needed to just change everything." It was then that he made a conscious decision to stop thinking about himself and discover his God-given purpose: helping others. So for the past 14 years, incarcerated at the G. Robert Cotton Correctional Facility in Jackson, Michigan, Rick Strong has worked as a GED Tutor, a mentor to new inmates, and has received an Associate of Arts and and a Bachelor's Degree. In prison, Richard Strong says he is never alone, but always lonely. That's why he hopes to meet a pen pal who values honesty, kindness, and real conversation, and who believes that everyone deserves to be seen as more than just their mistakes. Read more about him at https://penpals.buzz/inmate/richard-strong

Robert, a PenPals.Buzz Super Fan, works as a caretaker in Illinois. After some personal experiences with friends and family members being arrested and incarcerated, he decided it was time for less judgment and more kindness. In addition to helping the free-world senior citizen residents as his place of employment, he felt a strong desire to help those behind the walls, too. That's when, about a year ago, he happened across PenPals.Buzz and began writing to male and female prison inmates around the country. (He did his homework and learned, from our podcast, how to avoid being manipulated and taken advantage of.) Robert shares his personal experiences writing to prisoners and talking to some on the phone. He feels he's doing God's work by offering a supportive ear to those who need it most. "Sometimes, it just takes a listener. People just wanna feel heard," he shares. Robert also offers helpful advice to others about what to do (and what not to do) when beginning a pen pal friendship with a prison inmate. Most important, he says, always remember to "come with confidence, because you are the boss."

In 1993, Marc Rosemond was convicted of 3 counts of murder and sentenced to Life in prison. Now, 33 years later, he calls the Prison Pen Pal Podcast from his cell at the Shawangunk Correctional Facility in Wallkill, New York. Desperate to find answers about why he committed such horrible crimes, Marc Rosemond (inmate #93A1985) shares how art, poetry, and music helped him work through his childhood trauma, find clarity, and transform his life into one of positivity and resiliency. In addition to helping him get through so many lonely days behind bars, music "actually helped others around me get through their day," he said. You'll even hear him playing and singing throughout the interview. In a way, the keyboard is his form of an "emotional support animal." He even named her Snowflake.

Matt Reynolds, Prison Inmate #2014486 at the Great Plains Correctional Center, is quite possibly the most interesting man in Oklahoma. This former Marine, paint salesman, and toy store manager most recently worked as a groundbreaking animal trainer and behaviorist with giraffes, rhinos, and even an albino monkey. Now serving a 20-year sentence, Matt joins us via prison telephone to talk about the types of pen pals he hopes to meet, to share some of his life stories, and to describe one of the more memorable surgeries he assisted on. Spoiler Alert: It may involve a giraffe vomiting into his mouth!

Thanksgiving in prison is a plate full of mixed emotions. On one hand, there's excitement with the special holiday meal (often including real turkey, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie). It's a time for cellmates and friends to get together and create something unique and delcious, like Jovan Stewart's Famous Banana Pudding, Rachell House's Enchilada Bowls, or Angelina Omara's Vanilla Pancakes. But the Holiday also serves as a painful reminder of what these individuals don't have -- the chance to be surrounded (at least physically) by family and friends. The chance to be around kids, parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, and childhood friends. The chance to share a meal with the people that mean the most to them. If they're lucky, they might get a phone call or a card or an email on their tablet as a reminder they haven't been forgotten. In this episode, we speak with some of the hundreds of inmates who called in to share their Thanksgiving stories, traditions, favorite foods, and who or what they're thankful for. It's an honest, raw, touching, heartwarming, sad, and sometimes humorous depiction of what Thanksgiving really means to someone incarcerated.

When Ryan Rice was growing up in Illinois, his parents let him do anything he wanted. Spoiled might be the word that comes to mind. The "freedom" he was granted as a young child ultimately sculpted him into a man with no direction, quitting most of the things he set his mind to...until, that is, he was sentenced to 35 years in a Dixon, Illinois prison. That's when things had to change. Tired of "going nowhere fast," Rice, a prison pen pal and member of PenPals.Buzz, shares why he made an "executive decision" about his life, and what that decision was. In the interview, we also discuss his over 60 tattoos, his love of women with accents, his propensity for telling corny dad jokes, and what he's seeking in a pen pal.

Prison Pen Pals, defined as prison inmates who write letters to people on the outside, may be incarcerated for doing really bad things, but they're STILL HUMAN. That's the belief of Salena in Indiana, a 22-year-old student (and soon to be school teacher) who has written over 30 prisoners in the past two years. "You think they're bad, but they're actually really sweet," Salena noted on this episode, adding that prison inmates (and her prison pen pals) are still human and still deserving of human interaction.

Hear her entire story, including who her very first prison pen pal was, what got her started writing to inmates in 2023, and how she deals with the pen pals who ask her for money. Then, we speak with penpals.buzz member Angelina Omara, a female prison inmate convicted of two murders and currently seeking a pen pal companion. Finally, we briefly check in with federal prison inmate Victoria Guerrero, as she describes how prison conditions have worsened since the government shutdown.