Reginald Dwayne Betts is the author of two collections of poems: Shahid Reads His Own Palm (Alice James), which won the Beatrice Hawley Award in 2010, and Bastards of the Reagan Era (Four Way Books), which is being published this fall. He is also the author of A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison (Penguin 2009) which recounted his time spent in prison and was awarded an NAACP Image Award.  Dwayne is the recipient of a Radcliffe Fellowship, a Steve Orlen Fellowship from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Workshop, a Peter Taylor Fellowship from the Kenyon Review, a Soros Justice Fellowship from the Open Society Institute, and the Frederick Bock Prize from Poetry magazine.  A husband and father of two sons, Dwayne is an activist advocating for the reform of the criminal justice system.  He is currently a student at the Yale Law School.