Joys That Transform Us: A Reading and Discussion with Dwayne Betts
Join us as we welcome Dwayne Betts, Poet, Lawyer, Founder & CEO of Freedom Reads, for an interactive reading and conversation. Betts will be reading from his latest book Doggerel, he will speak about his experience writing it, and will lead the audience in an open conversation about the book, what it brought up, and Freedom Reads’ mission and work in prisons nationwide.
Simultaneously philosophical and playful, Doggerel, released on March 4, 2025, is a meditation on family, falling in love, friendship, and those who accompany us on our walk through life. Dwayne is donating 54 cents to Freedom Reads for each copy of Doggerel sold, the amount he was paid per hour as a prison librarian during his incarceration.
Anew is a gathering space and discovery center for social transformation located in NYC. We host interactive events and workshops, an accelerator program for nonprofits, and a retail lab featuring ethically-sourced coffee and gifts.
Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, lawyer, and founder and CEO of Freedom Reads. At sixteen, he was sentenced to nine years in adult prison for an armed carjacking, where he discovered poetry and the law. His work since then has been one long inquiry into how a child ends up in prison and what it takes to come home, pursued through poetry, memoir, theater, photography, and film. A MacArthur Fellow, Betts has authored six books, including A Question of Freedom and Doggerel (W.W. Norton, 2025). His solo theater work Felon: An American Washi Tale has been performed at San Quentin and the Perelman Performing Arts Center. He earned his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he is an Associate Research Scholar.
Freedom Reads is the only organization in the country dedicated to building libraries inside prison cell blocks. Each Freedom Library is handcrafted, often by people who have served time themselves, and placed within arm’s reach of the people it serves. Betts founded it on a simple conviction: freedom begins with a book.