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REGINALD Dwayne Betts is the author of A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison (Avery, 2009) and three poetry collections, including Shahid Reads His Own Palm (Alice James Books, 2010), Bastards of the Reagan Era (Four Way Books, 2015), and, most recently, Felon, published in October by W. W. Norton. An exploration of love, fatherhood, and grace, the new book is also a testament to the trauma of years in prison as well as the challenges of life postincarceration—subjects Betts knows well. Arrested and charged with three felonies in an armed carjacking when he was sixteen, Betts was tried as an adult and sentenced to nine years in prison. After his release he struggled to sidestep his record but went on to graduate from Prince George’s Community College in Largo, Maryland, and earn a bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland in College Park and an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, North Carolina. In 2016 Betts graduated from Yale Law School, and a year later he passed the Connecticut bar exam and eventually was recommended for admission to the bar. He now lives in New Haven with his wife and two children; he is studying for his PhD in law at Yale.

We asked poet, author, and activist Mahogany L. Browne to visit Betts in New Haven as the publication date for sFelon approached.

I am drawn to Reginald Dwayne Betts like any homesick person looking for family. In him I see my gone kin with every expletive sentence laced lovely. The Metro-North New Haven train station is not that different from the one where I wait for my family car to retrieve me from the dusty Amtrak station in Emeryville, California. A city bus billows heat nearby, and a man smoking a cigarette looks annoyed at the lot of it all before I notice a responsible-sized SUV pull into the driveway, windows down. Bucket hat and prescription glasses can’t hide the identity of.