"March Forth: An American Washi Tale" by Reginald Dwayne Betts

Tulsa LitFest 2025 keynote performer/speaker is poet and MacArthur "Genius Grant" winner Reginald Dwayne Betts. Betts will be performing his one-man solo performance "March Forth: An American Washi Tale" at the OSU Auditorium as the headlining event of LitFest2025. This celebrated dramatic enactment sheds intimate light on the experiences of individuals under incarceration. Influenced by Betts's own experiences as well as those of other inmates, "March Forth: An American Washi Tale" will be followed by a brief Q&A with Betts and a signing of his new collection of poetry Doggerel.

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet and lawyer. A 2021 MacArthur Fellow, he is the Executive Director of Freedom Reads, a not-for-profit organization that is radically transforming the access to literature in prisons through the installation of Freedom Libraries in prisons across this country.

For more than twenty-years, he has used his poetry and essays to explore the world of Pr*son and the effects of violence and incarceration on American society. The author of a memoir and three collections of poetry, he has transformed his latest collection of poetry, the American Book Award winning Felon, into a solo theater show that explores the post incarceration experience and lingering consequences of a criminal record through poetry, stories, and engaging with the timeless and transcendental art of paper-making.

In 2019, Betts won the National Magazine Award in the Essays and Criticism category for his NY Times Magazine essay that chronicles his journey from Pr*son to becoming a licensed attorney. He has been awarded a Radcliffe Fellowship from Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Emerson Fellow at New America, and most recently a Civil Society Fellow at Aspen. Betts holds a J.D. from Yale Law School.

https://www.dwaynebetts.com/bio

Host or Publisher Tulsa LitFest