Poet, Lawyer Reginald Dwayne Betts On His Latest Poetry Collection, ----Felon----

Tom’s guest is Reginald Dwayne Betts. He came to our attention last year when he wrote a wonderful piece in The New York Times Magazine entitled, “Could an Ex-Convict Become an Attorney? I Intended to Find Out,---- for which he won a National Magazine Award. When Betts was 16, he was part of a group that committed an armed car-jacking. For that crime, he spent eight years and three months in adult prisons, including many months in solitary confinement.After his release from prison, Mr. Betts earned a bachelor’s degree and an MFA in poetry. He then went on to get a law degree from Yale.It was in prison that he started reading and writing poetry. His latest collection of poems is called ----Felon.----Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.