"It was just one of those tragedies," he recalled. "I think you can walk out in the morning and become a totally different person without even realizing it. ... It's another world out there where these kids have got other options, that their realm of possibilities include things that are dangerous and criminal - and likely."
He survived incarceration by burying himself in reading and writing.
"I scrambled up money cleaning toilets to pay for books," he said. "I didn't know the books would lead me to getting A's in college [or] would lead me to writing a book. I just did it because books helped me not to go crazy inside the cell."
It was a choice pushed on him by people who saw promise in him even at his lowest point.
One of those people was Alice Holman, who ran the GED program at Fairfax County, Va.'s jail, where he was initially held, he said. She had him writing essays and keeping a daily journal. "In a very real way, she formed me by giving me the opportunity to write all the time," he said. He began writing poetry later, while in solitary confinement after he was accused of assaulting prison guards when he was first incarcerated.
Another helping hand came from Yao Glover, co-owner of the since-closed Karibu Books chain in the Washington area, who met Betts shortly after he was released from prison in 2005 and hired him despite his past. It was a dream job for an aspiring writer, Betts said, since it allowed him to meet noted authors and poets. It also introduced him to his future wife, Terese, who came into the store looking for books for a class. She graduated from Towson University on Wednesday.
"I think most of us make it based on the support systems that build themselves around us," Betts said. "I didn't even build that support system."
Those who've mentored Betts say he's imbued with remarkable drive and a thirst to learn.
Professor Michael Collier, a former Maryland poet laureate who teaches creative writing at College Park, met Betts at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Vermont that Collier runs every summer.
"It seems as if the gods sent Dwayne to us at Maryland to remind us of what we are capable [of] when we follow our passion for something like writing," Collier wrote in an e-mail, "and when we work hard and remain humble to the mystery of the forces of fate."
