After earning her Ph.D., Betts returned to Chicago and began her post as a visiting lecturer at University of Illinois-Chicago in 2015. Prior to that, she was a lecturer in creative writing at
Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, until 2011. A
Cave Canem graduate, and residencies from Ragdale Foundation, Centrum and Caldera, and an Illinois Arts Council Artist fellowship. Betts has self-published small runs of several chapbooks: "Can I Hang?" (1999), "Switch" (2003), "Break the Habit" (2012), and "Circling Unexpectedly" (2013). Her most recent chapbook
7 x 7: kwansabas was published by Backbone Press in 2015. Betts is also a co-editor of
The Beiging of America: Personal Narratives About Being Mixed Race in the Twenty-First Century (2 Leaf Press, 2017) with Cathy Schlund-Vials and Sean Patrick Forbes. She is working on a third collection of poetry, a collection of critical essays, and a translation of poems by Salomé Ureña de Henríquez. Betts was commissioned by the Peggy Choy Dance Company to write a series of poems and monologues for "THE GREATEST!: An Homage to Muhammad Ali" in 2011 & 2013. These writings were published on Winged City Press in April 2013 and were mentioned in the
New York Times. Betts' work has appeared in
Essence, the Steppenwolf Theater production
Words on Fire,
Obsidian III,
Callaloo,
PMS,
Meridians,
Drum Voices Revue,
WSQ,
Columbia Poetry Review,
African Voices, Ninth Letter,
Hanging Loose,
Drunken Boat,
Mythium,
Reverie, and
WombPoetry. Her work has been anthologized in
Gathering Ground (University of Michigan Press),
Bum Rush the Page (Three Rivers Press),
Power Lines (Tia Chucha Press),
Poetry Slam (Manic D Press),
Black Writing from Chicago (Southern Illinois University Press),
ROLE CALL (Third World Press),
These Hands I Know (Sarabande),
Best Black Women’s Erotica 2 (Cleis Press),
Hurricane Blues (Southeast Missouri University Press),
Home Girls Make Some Noise: Hip Hop Feminism (Parker Publishing),
Fingernails Across a Chalkboard (Third World Press),
Quotes Community: Notes for Black Poets (University of Michigan Press) and
Letters to the World (Red Hen Press). She appeared on HBO's
Def Poetry Jam and in the
Black Family Channel series
SPOKEN with
Jessica Care Moore. She has also been one of the writers/performers in
girlstory-an intergenerational, multicultural women's performance collective. Betts has also performed in plays, including two SouthWest V-Day productions of
Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues at Chicago's DuSable Museum. After winning Guild Complex's Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Award, she represented Chicago twice at the
National Poetry Slam in 1999 and 2000. Betts has also taught writing workshops at Cook County Jail and Cook County Juvenile Detention Center. Betts has also been a freelance writer for publications including
XXL,
The Source,
BIBR,
Mosaic Magazine and
Black Radio Exclusive. She has written fictional blog posts in the voice of character named Madeline "Maddy" James for "Any Resemblance"-a multimedia dance show with serial webisodes in June 2013. ==Published works==