Miami Book Fair: Alexandra Lytton Regalado In Conversation With Reginal Dwayne Betts

Miami Book Fair 2022 presents National Poetry Series winner Alexandra Lytton Regalado on Relinquenda: Poems in conversation with the judge who selected her manuscript, Reginal Dwayne Betts, author of Felon: Poems. The poems collected in Relinquenda are a meditation on cancer, the passing of Lytton Regaldo’s father, and the renewed significance of community. Written entirely during the COVID-19 lockdown and situated in the tropical landscapes of Miami and El Salvador, these poems explore impermanence, the body, communication and inarticulation, and the need to let go in order to heal regrets. In Felon, Betts, the founder and executive director of Freedom Reads, a not-for-profit transforming access to literature in prisons, addresses the effects of incarceration and life post-incarceration. This program includes a special introduction by National Poetry Series founder Daniel Halpern and will be available on-demand at MiamiBookFairOnline.com.

Alexandra Lytton Regalado is the author of the poetry collection Matria, which won the St. Lawrence Book Award. Her poetry has been published nationwide and anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2018. She is the co-director of Editorial Kalina and editor of Puntos de Fuga/Vanishing Points, a bilingual anthology of contemporary Salvadoran prose. Lytton Regaldo holds an MFA in poetry from Florida International University and an MFA in fiction from Pacific University. Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, lawyer, and prison reform advocate. A MacArthur Fellow, he is the author of the collection Felon: Poems, which addresses the effects of incarceration and life post-incarceration. Betts is also the founder and executive director of Freedom Reads, a not-for-profit transforming access to literature in prisons by installing Freedom Libraries across the country.

This event is funded in part through a Florida Humanities Book Festival Grant in partnership with the Miami Dade College Foundation.