At sixteen, Reginald Dwayne Betts was sentenced to eight years in prison; At thirty-five, he graduated from Yale Law School. Currently working on a Ph.D in Law, Betts has won numerous awards and fellowships for his work as an author and educator whose practice compassionately addresses the complex lives of the incarcerated. A memoirist and poet, Betts’s first book, A Question of Freedom, recounted his own time in prison. In his most recent book of poetry, Felon, Betts tells the story of the journey after prison, revealing the “visceral effect that prison has on identity, ” and how those effects reverberate throughout American society.

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This program is presented in partnership with the Poetry Foundation.

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