Jazz Poetry 2025: Reginald “Dwayne” Betts, Volodymr Rafeyenko, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Anouar Rahmani

Jazz Poetry Month brings so much talent to the stage, it’s hard to believe we’re only halfway through! Each Jazz Poetry program begins with a full set from a live jazz band, followed by a collaboration with local and international poets. In these collaborations, poets share their work alongside the musicians, the two art forms melding to create that signature Jazz Poetry improvisational style that offers something exciting, new, and unique with each individual performance. 

This performance puts the spotlight on incredible poets Reginald “Dwayne” Betts,  MacArthur genius, poet, lawyer, and founder of Freedom Reads, Volodymyr Rafeyenko, a writer, poet, translator, and literary critic from Kyiv, Ukraine, who became a Writer-in-Residence at City of Asylum following the outbreak of Russian aggression in Ukraine in 2022, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, a poet and sound artist whose latest work, Village, is described by Camille Dungy as “part instruction manual, part celebration, part dance party, part garden tour,” and Anouar Rahmani, an Algerian novelist, journalist, and activist (and a Writer-in-Residence at City of Asylum) whose literary work boldly challenges societal norms and advocates for freedom of expression, LGBTQ+ rights, and social justice. These four poets will share the stage with an incredible, soon-to-be-announced band, so stay tuned for further details!

About the Poets:

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet and lawyer. A 2021 MacArthur Fellow, he is the Executive Director of Freedom Reads, a not-for-profit organization that is radically transforming access to literature in prisons through the installation of Freedom Libraries in prisons across this country. For more than twenty years, he has used his poetry and essays to explore the world of prison and the effects of violence and incarceration on American society. The author of a memoir and three collections of poetry, he has transformed his latest collection of poetry, the American Book Award winning Felon, into a solo theater show that explores the post-incarceration experience and lingering consequences of a criminal record through poetry, stories, and engaging with the timeless and transcendental art of paper-making. In 2019, Betts won the National Magazine Award in the Essays and Criticism category for his New York Times Magazine essay that chronicles his journey from prison to becoming a licensed attorney. He has been awarded a Radcliffe Fellowship from Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Emerson Fellow at New America, and most recently, a Civil Society Fellow at Aspen. Betts holds a J.D. from Yale Law School.

Interdisciplinary poet and sound artist LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs is the author of Village (Coffee House Press, 2023) and TwERK (Belladonna, 2013). She is the author of three chapbooks, which include Ichi- Ban and Ni-Ban (MOH Press), Manuel is destroying my bathroom (Belladonna*), and the album Televisíon. Diggs’ work is truly hybrid: languages and modes are grafted together and furl out insistently from each bound splice. Diggs has received a 2020 C.D. Wright Award for Poetry from the Foundation of Contemporary Art, a 2016 Whiting Award and a 2015 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, as well as grants and fellowships from the Howard Foundation, Cave Canem, Creative Capital, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission, among others. Diggs has presented and performed at a wide and eclectic array of venues, from the California Institute of the Arts and The Museum of Modern Art to the International Poetry Festival of Copenhagen and the International Poetry Festival of Romania. As an independent curator, artistic director, and producer, Diggs has presented events for BAMCafé, Black Rock Coalition, El Museo del Barrio, La Casita, and more. She teaches at Brooklyn and Barnard College and lives in New York City.

Volodymyr Rafeyenko is an award-winning Ukrainian writer, poet, translator, and literary and film critic from Kyiv, Ukraine. He graduated from Donetsk University with a degree in Russian philology and culture studies, and from 1992 to 2018, he wrote his works in Russian, was mainly published in Russia, and was considered a representative of Russian literature. Following the outbreak of Russian aggression in Ukraine, Volodymyr left Donetsk and moved to a town near Kyiv where he wrote Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love, his first novel in the Ukrainian language, which was shortlisted for the Taras Shevchenko National Prize—Ukraine’s highest award in arts and culture. Volodymyr learned Ukrainian from scratch and has dedicated himself to speaking Ukrainian, rather than Russian, his mother tongue, as an act of resistance and perseverance. Among other recognitions, he is the winner of the Volodymyr Korolenko Prize for the novel Brief Farewell Book (1999) and the Visegrad Eastern Partnership Literary Award for the novel The Length of Days (2017). Volodymyr’s prose is full of phantasmagorical images and storylines, as well as explicit and implicit allusions to well-known texts. He is sometimes called the “magical postmodernist” due to the intertextuality and richness of his prose. He is a Research Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh and a Writer-in-Residence at City of Asylum with his wife, Olesia Rafeyenko, since June 2023.

Anouar Rahmani is an Algerian novelist, journalist, and human rights defender whose literary work boldly challenges societal norms and advocates for freedom of expression, LGBTQ+ rights, and social justice. He has published four novels, each igniting critical discourse and controversy. As a pioneering advocate for human rights, Rahmani was the first to publicly demand the legalization of same-sex marriage in Algeria, breaking one of the country’s most significant taboos. He is also a prominent figure in the women’s rights movement in Algeria and the broader Arab world. Rahmani’s commitment to literature and human rights has earned him prestigious international recognition. In 2021, he was shortlisted for the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award and honored by the German Bundestag’s “Parliamentarians for Parliamentarians” initiative. He is a 2022 Artist Protection Fund Fellow and a City of Asylum Writer-in-Residence (2022-2025). His academic journey includes esteemed fellowships such as the Carnegie Mellon Scholars Fellowship (2022-2024) and the Scholars at Risk Fellowship (2023-2024). Rahmani holds a Master’s degree in law, States, and Institutions & International Law from Algeria and a Master’s in Global Communication and Applied Translation from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Forced into exile due to threats and repression, Rahmani now resides in the United States, where he continues his literary and advocacy work. 

About Your Visit: 

The in-house restaurant Cucina Alfabeto is open for dinner from 5–10 pm. Please visit Open Table or call 412-435-1111 to make a reservation.