Winner of the 2019 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry Finalist for the 2019 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry A searing volume by a

This groundbreaking, transgenre work—part detective story, part literary memoir, part imagined past—is intensely autobiographical and confessional. Proceedi

A unique prison narrative that testifies to the power of books to transform a young man's life At the age of sixteen, R. Dwayne Betts-a good student from a lowe

Gripping and terrifying, eloquent and heartwrenching, this debut collection delves into hellish territory: prison life. Soulful poems somberly capture time-bend

"Forgive state poet #289-128 / for not scribbling illusions / of trickery as if timeless hell / could be captured by stanzas / alliteration or slant rhyme," rem