Reginald Dwayne Betts transformed himself from a 16-year-old kid sentenced to nine years in prison to a critically acclaimed writer and graduate of the Yale Law School. The founder of Freedom Reads, a first-of-its-kind organization working to radically transform access to literature in prison, Betts is a poet, scholar, and advocate for the reform of the criminal justice system. For this event, Betts will be delivering a theatrical performance, Felon: An American Washi Tale, based on his acclaimed collection Felon (W.W. Norton, 2019) that interweaves poetry with personal experience to deliver a powerful exploration of art, fatherhood, punishment, and mass incarceration. Betts is a recent recipient of a MacArthur Grant, and the author of three books of poetry, as well as the memoir A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison (2009).
