Dwayne Betts is a poet, lawyer, and founding CEO of Freedom Reads, an organization that builds beautifully handcrafted 500-book micro-libraries and places them within feet of the cells and bunks that people call home in prison.
Being at Civitella was like being, to quote Proust, “liberated from the order of time.” I experienced time in a gorgeous slow motion, watching as the ivy turned red against the castle walls and my drafts drifted as if of their own accord into new...
This was my first interdisciplinary residency, and my thinking has been transformed by the conversations I had with other Fellows. The whole experience was so generative and nurturing. It’s a rare privilege to be able to work in such a setting, too – the...