From juvenile carjacker to award-winning writer: Inspiring inmates and MFA students

When R. Dwayne Betts was 16, he went from good student to carjacker, committing six felonies that landed him in an adult prison for nine years. From that experience grew Betts’ memoir, A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison, published in 2009, and his 2010 book of poetry, Shahid Reads His Own Palm.

On Dec. 2 at Chatham University, its MFA program in Creative Writing will host a free public reading and book signing by Betts, which is part of Chatham’s Words Without Walls Black Writers Reading Series, supported by the Advancing Black Arts in Pittsburgh Fund of The Pittsburgh Foundation. The Fund will also bring Betts and four other black writers during the coming year to the Allegheny County Jail, where Words Without Walls aids inmates in studying creative writing.

“These are the kinds of people we really want the inmates to see: someone who has had issues in the past but is now successful,” says Sheryl St. Germain, director of Chatham University’s MFA in Creative Writing program, about R. Dwayne Betts. She is also pleased that his poetry and memoir will speak to local literati as well. Betts is widely published and also uses his voice to campaign for changes in the justice system in this country.

Chatham students and others continue to work with inmate and ex-inmate writers through the twice-monthly Voice Catch writers’ workshop. As for the MFA students and other would-be writers who may never have been incarcerated but wish to attend Betts’ reading: “They are going to be in touch with someone who is down to earth and is not an academic,” St. Germain says. “Sometimes we see students who are kind of lazy” when it comes to their writing, she adds. They will likely get inspiration to work harder “when they see someone who saved his life through writing.”

Do Good:

• Join the Campaign for Youth Justice, which is concerned with prison reform and juvenile justice — and for which R. Dwayne Betts serves as spokesperson.

Writer: Marty Levine

Source: Sheryl St. Germain, Chatham University