Truthiness: Featuring Sterlin Harjo & Reginald Dwayne Betts
Panel discussion featuring MacArthur Fellows Sterlin Harjo and Reginald Dwayne Betts.
What is more shapeshifting than the truth? Sterlin Harjo & Reginald Dwayne Betts join PAM CUT for a MacArthur Fellows Panel. Presented as part of PAM CUT’s PLUS PLUS Festival, join us for a FREE hosted discussion exploring questions like: What are truths? What makes them true? In this moderated conversation, we ask multidisciplinary artists Sterlin Harjo and Reginald Dwayne Betts to consider truth and truthiness.
Sterlin Harjo (Seminole/Mvskoke) is a MacArthur Fellow, award-winner, writer, director, and showrunner from Holdenville, Oklahoma. Most recently, Sterlin created, wrote, directed and is the executive producer of THE LOWDOWN, currently airing on FX and Hulu, starring Ethan Hawke. Previously, he was the showrunner, co-creator with Taika Waititi and director of the Emmy-nominated RESERVATION DOGS for FX. The series ran for three seasons and received numerous awards including a Gotham Award, a Peabody Award, two Independent Spirit Awards and honors from the Television Academy.
Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, lawyer, and founder and CEO of Freedom Reads. At sixteen, he was sentenced to nine years in adult prison for an armed carjacking, where he discovered poetry and the law. His work since then has been one long inquiry into how a child ends up in prison and what it takes to come home, pursued through poetry, memoir, theater, photography, and film. A MacArthur Fellow, Betts has authored six books, including A Question of Freedom and Doggerel (W.W. Norton, 2025). His solo theater work Felon: An American Washi Tale has been performed at San Quentin and the Perelman Performing Arts Center. He earned his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he is an Associate Research Scholar. Freedom Reads is the only organization in the country dedicated to building libraries inside prison cell blocks. Each Freedom Library is handcrafted, often by people who have served time themselves, and placed within arm’s reach of the people it serves. Betts founded it on a simple conviction: freedom begins with a book.
Defying Boundaries: MacArthur Fellows at 45: This moment calls for creative courage. For 45 years, MacArthur Fellows have expanded the boundaries of possibility by questioning conventions, crossing disciplines, and driving collective progress. Throughout 2026, the Foundation is celebrating the ground- breaking work of the Fellows and inspiring public dialogue through a series of nationwide events and conversations. Learn more at macfound.org/fellows-45.
The MacArthur Foundation boldly invests in creative solutions to urgent challenges, sparking hope for our future. We strive toward transformative change on some of the world’s most pressing social issues, including the existential threats of climate change, criminal justice reform, revitalizing local news in the U.S., expanding who creates, uses, and benefits from artificial intelligence, and strengthening the well-being of Native communities. In addition, we maintain enduring commitments in our hometown Chicago, where we invest in people, places, and partnerships to build a more inclusive Chicago and in journalism and media, where we invest in more just and inclusive news and narratives. We also make awards to extraordinarily creative individuals through the MacArthur Fellows program and for solutions to critical problems of our time through 100&Change.