Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, memoirist, and lawyer. His writing grapples with the central role of incarceration to the American experience. His next collection of poetry, Felon, will be published in October 2019 by Norton. His previous collection, Bastards of the Reagan Era received the 2016 New England Award in Poetry. His first collection of poems, Shahid Reads His Own Palm, won the Beatrice Hawley Awards and was selected by the National Book Foundation’s Literature for Justice Committee as a 2018-2019 title. Betts’ memoir, A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison, was the recipient of the 2010 NAACP Image Award for nonfiction. He is a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow and a 2018 Emerson Fellow at New America. He holds a BA from the University of Maryland, an MFA from Warren Wilson College, and a JD from Yale Law School.