Dwayne Betts ’16 Receives 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry

Reginald Dwayne Betts ’16, who is a PhD in Law candidate at Yale Law School, has been named a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow in poetry. On April 4, 2018, the Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation approved the awarding of 173 Guggenheim Fellowships (including two joint Fellowships) to a diverse group of scholars, artists, and scientists.

“It’s exceptionally satisfying to name 175 new Guggenheim Fellows. These artists and writers, scholars and scientists, represent the best of the best,” said Edward Hirsch, president of the Foundation. “Each year since 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation has bet everything on the individual, and we’re thrilled to continue to do so with this wonderfully talented and diverse group.”

Since its establishment in 1925, the Foundation has granted more than $360 million in Fellowships to more than 18,000 individuals, among whom are scores of Nobel laureates, Fields Medalists, poets laureate, members of the various national academies, and winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Turing Award, National Book Awards, and other important, internationally recognized honors.

Betts was raised in Suitland, Maryland. A poet, memoirist, and lawyer, his writing and research investigate, explore, and grapple with the central role of incarceration to the American experience.

His latest collection of poetry, Bastards of the Reagan Era (Four Way Books, 2015) received the 2016 PEN New England Award in Poetry. His first collection of poems, Shahid Reads His Own Palm, won the Beatrice Hawley Award. Betts’ memoir, A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison, was the recipient of the 2010 NAACP Image Award for non-fiction. Betts has received fellowships from Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies, the Open Society Institute, and New America.

He holds a B.A. from the University of Maryland; an M.F.A. from Warren Wilson College, where he was a Holden Fellow; and, a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was awarded the Israel H. Perez Prize for best student note or comment appearing in the Yale Law Journal. As a Liman Fellow, he spent a year representing clients in the New Haven Public Defender’s Office.

For more information on the Fellows and their projects, please visit the Foundation’s website at http://www.gf.org.