A Cave Canem graduate,[5] and residencies from Ragdale Foundation, Centrum and Caldera, and an Illinois Arts Council Artist fellowship.

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 appeared on HBO's Def Poetry Jam[8] and in the Black Family Channel series SPOKEN with Jessica Care Moore.

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.

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.