Meet Our Founder
Benjamin Frandsen
Founder & Executive Director – Ben Free
Benjamin Frandsen is a poet, essayist, memoirist, podcaster, and advocate whose work centers on incarceration, redemption, and the transformative power of storytelling. A 2026 Writing Freedom Fellow, his writing has appeared in PEN America prison writing anthologies, Columbia University’s exCHANGE Ma
Founder & Executive Director – Ben Free
Benjamin Frandsen is a poet, essayist, memoirist, podcaster, and advocate whose work centers on incarceration, redemption, and the transformative power of storytelling. A 2026 Writing Freedom Fellow, his writing has appeared in PEN America prison writing anthologies, Columbia University’s exCHANGE Magazine, UCLA Magazine, The Massachusetts Review, Open Campus, the Prison Journalism Project, and the Vera Institute of Justice’s The Human Toll of Jail. His poem “To Be Heard” was performed at the 2019 PEN World Voices Festival, and “Time In” was published in Iconoclast.
Benjamin is also the creator and host of the Ben Free Podcast, a weekly true‑crime and reentry‑focused series featuring interviews with people who survived life sentences, overturned wrongful convictions, and rebuilt their lives. Drawing from his own 18 years of incarceration, the podcast explores the emotional, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of surviving extreme punishment and returning home.
As the Founder and Executive Director of the Ben Free Project, Benjamin leads a creative‑literacy initiative that amplifies the voices of formerly incarcerated people and delivers arts programming inside California prisons. Under his leadership, the project has secured multiple contracts to support writing, mentorship, and media‑based education for justice‑impacted communities.
Benjamin’s forthcoming memoir, Some Mother’s Darling, carries a deeply personal legacy. The manuscript was first begun by his mother, Robbie Frandsen, before she lost her battle with cancer while Benjamin was still incarcerated. After her passing, he continued the work she started—shaping the book into a meditation on grief, survival, and the enduring power of a mother’s belief in her child.
A military veteran and former life‑sentenced prisoner, Benjamin rebuilt his life through education, earning his UCLA English Honors degree and completing his MFA at San Diego State University in 2026. Today, he mentors emerging writers nationwide and leads Ben Free with a commitment to dignity, narrative power, and the belief that every person deserves the chance to rewrite their future.
Explore more of Benjamin’s work at www.benfrandsen.com