Clint Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of How the Word Is Passed, the #1 New York Times bestseller that won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and was named one of the Times’ 10 Best Books of 2021. He’s also an acclaimed poet and a former high school English teacher in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Few people write with more clarity and care about how history lives in the present.

ABOUT THE FILM

At 16, Dwayne Betts was tried as an adult for carjacking and sentenced to nine years in prison. He became a poet in solitary confinement and since his release on March 4th 2005, has published award-winning collections of poetry, graduated Yale Law school, won a MacArthur “Genius” award, and created a non-profit that brings curated libraries to prison cell blocks. But prison haunts his success, as he still struggles to feel worthy of love, acceptance, and forgiveness.

Directed and produced by Robe Imbriano and Valerie Hong, March Forth follows Reginald Dwayne Betts on his journey from a teenager in prison to opening hundreds of Freedom Libraries in prisons across the country.