Arts, Culture, and Entertainment

  • 2/10 Poetry Reading by Reginald Dwayne Betts

    The University of Connecticut’s Creative Writing Program is pleased to announce that poet Reginald Dwayne Betts will read on Wednesday, February 10, at 6 p.m. at the Storrs Center Cooperative Bookstore, One Royce Circle, 101 Storrs Center, Storrs, CT 06268.

    Reginald Dwayne Betts grew up in Suitland, Maryland, near Washington, D.C. He has authored two books of poetry, Bastards of the Reagan Era (Four Way Books, 2015) and Shahid Reads His Own Palm (Alice James, 2010). He also wrote the memoir A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison (Avery/Penguin, 2009), in which he recounts and reflects on his experience of nearly a decade of imprisonment following a carjacking that he participated in as a teenager. A Question of Freedom was awarded the 2010 NAACP Image Award for nonfiction.

    In addition, Betts was named a 2010 Soros Justice Fellow and, in 2011, was awarded a fellowship by Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. In 2012, he received a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. Other recognitions include the Holden Fellowship from Warren Wilson College and a fellowship from the Cave Canem Foundation. In 2012, President Barack Obama appointed him to the Coordinating Council of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

    Betts received an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College and is currently a student at Yale Law School.

    This event is free and open to the public. Please visit http://creativewriting.uconn.edu/ for more information on the Creative Writing Program.

    For more information, contact: Erick Piller at erick.piller@uconn.edu