During this talk, Reginald Dwayne Betts will explore Felon: An American Washi Tale, a solo show that confronts the weight and legitimacy of the word "felon" through poetry, visual art, and performance. Drawing from his own story—sent to prison at 16, discovering poetry behind bars—Betts will offer an immersive meditation on incarceration, identity, and the power of art to reshape the narrative of who we are and who we might become.

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, lawyer, and the Founder and CEO of Freedom Reads, an initiative to radically transform access to literature in prisons. The author of a memoir and five collections of poetry, Betts is a MacArthur Fellow and has been awarded fellowships from Harvard's Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study, the National Endowment for the Arts, Emerson Collective, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School. Betts founded Freedom Reads in 2020 with a grant from the Mellon Foundation. To date, the organization has opened more than 500 Freedom Libraries in 50 adult and youth prisons across 13 states. These libraries provide a locus where conversation and community can begin inside and outside of prison walls, supporting the efforts of incarcerated individuals to imagine new possibilities for their lives.

This program is made possible through the generous support of our community partners: Western Michigan University, the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College, the Department of English at Kalamazoo Valley Community College, the Kalamazoo Public Library, the Kalamazoo Defender, and the Kalamazoo Bar Association.