R. Dwayne Betts

about the author

R. Dwayne Betts

Author of A Question of Freedom and National Spokesperson for the Campaign for Youth Justice

R. Dwayne Betts was raised in Suitland, Maryland. The only child of a single mother, his earliest years showed the kind of academic promise that leads children to be labeled as gifted. Throughout school, despite often finding himself in trouble for talking too loudly and much too often, he excelled in his schoolwork. Friends, family members, and teachers all expected that he’d attend college and become the engineer he told anyone who would listen that he wanted to be.

In high school his behavior changed. While his grades in school improved, the effort he put into his classes decreased. He began experimenting with marijuana, skipping a class here and there. Then suddenly, without warning, he and a friend found themselves in a nearly empty parking lot with a gun. At sixteen years old, Dwayne carjacked a man and began the journey that would end with a nine-year prison sentence that would change his life forever. While incarcerated in some of the toughest adult prisons in Virginia, Dwayne learned to question his own decisions and began to shape his life into something he could be proud of. After spending most of his teenage years and early twenties in prison, Dwayne walked back into the world committed to proving his life wouldn’t be reduced to the thirty seconds he had held a gun in his hand. Since that day, Dwayne has taught poetry in several Washington, D.C. metro area public schools. He is the program director for the D.C. Creative Writing Workshop, a non-profit organization based in southeastern Washington, D.C., that has provided creative writing instruction to the students of Simon Elementary, Hart Middle School, and Ballou Senior High School for the past decade.

The Washington Post ran a front-page profile about Dwayne and YoungMenRead, a book club he began for boys. He also has been profiled on the front page of The Baltimore Sun and has given commentary for NPR’s All Things Considered. His poetry has been widely published and he is the winner of the 2009 Beatrice Hawley Award. Dwayne has received full-tuition scholarships to complete each level of his college education. He was a member of the Honors Academy at Prince George’s Community College after earning the Academy’s full-tuition scholarship. He also won the prestigious TAES scholarship to attend the University of Maryland and the Holden Fellowship to attend Warren Wilson College’s MFA program for writers. In 2007, he graduated with high honors from Prince George’s Community College and on May 21, 2009, he had the honor of addressing his peers and classmates at the University of Maryland as the 2009 student commencement speaker. His story is a compelling one, and it has led him to speak at congressional briefings, on panels with distinguished judges, lawyers, and advocates, and as an expert on the issues surrounding juvenile justice reform and rehabilitation as the national spokesperson for the Campaign for Youth Justice. His story is one of the redemptive power of words, and how he changed his life from inside a prison cell.

Dwayne received the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Debut for A Question of Freedom in February 2010.

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Featured Book

A Question of Freedom Buy Now

A Question of Freedom

"Dwayne Betts was incarcerated for 9 years in an unforgiving place—a place in which he also discovered the incredible power of books and reading. He's written his own life-changing book, which may well prevent other young men from making that detour to prison."

—Hill Harper, bestselling author of Letters to a Young Brother and Letters to a Young Sister

Speaking Topics

  • A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison

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