Doggerel In The Stacks: With Reginald Dwayne Betts and Alexandra Horowitz

Join poet and lawyer Reginald Dwayne Betts and cognitive scientist Alexandra Horowitz for an evening of readings and conversation celebrating Doggerel, Betts’s acclaimed new collection of poetry.

Praised by The New York Times as “the most joyous serious book of poetry you’ll read this summer,” Doggerel moves between memory and hope. Betts, a 2021 MacArthur Fellow and Founder and CEO of Freedom Reads, was inspired by his pandemic puppy, and other dogs that he writes about in his book, to think in new ways about freedom.

Horowitz, a leading expert on dog cognition and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Inside of a Dog, studies perception and meaning through the everyday wonders of how animals—and humans—see the world.

Together, they'll explore how poetry and science both teach us to pay attention — to what we've overlooked, to what we've taken for granted, to what might set us free.

Reception to follow

 

PARTICIPANTS

 

Reginald Dwayne Betts is Founder & CEO of Freedom Reads, an initiative to radically transform access to literature in prisons, was inspired by books during his nearly nine years in prison as a teenager and young man. He is the author of a memoir and five collections of poetry.

Freedom Reads is the only organization in the country with a mission to open libraries in prison cell blocks and thereby support the efforts of incarcerated individuals to imagine new possibilities for their lives. As Dwayne often declares, “Freedom begins with a book.”

 

 

Alexandra Horowitz is a cognitive scientist and author known for her research on dog cognition, which she conducts as the head of the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College. She is the author of several award-winning books including the New York Times bestseller Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know and The Year of the Puppy. Her work focuses on understanding what it is like to be a dog from their perspective, and her research and writing aim to foster empathy and a deeper connection between humans and canines.