The Marygrove Conservancy Contemporary American Authors Lecture Series

The Marygrove Conservancy is pleased to announce that the thirty-fourth guest in the Contemporary American Authors Lecture Series (CAALS) is novelist and essayist Robert Jones, Jr. Jones–not to be confused with Detroit’s great storyteller and musician Rev. Robert B. Jones, Sr.–is the author of The New York Times bestselling novel The Prophets and the creator of the social justice media community, Son of Baldwin. He will deliver the Bauder Lecture. The topic will be his experience as a Black student in an M.F.A. writing program. Join us for:

“Shoo, Fly, Shoo! Black Artistic Survival Beyond the Swatting Hand of Workshop Whiteness”
The Marygrove Conservancy
8425 McNichols Rd.
Detroit, MI 48221
Friday, April 28, 2023
8 p.m.
​Admission is free, but you must register. To register, visit: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/caals-bauder-lecture-with-robert-jones-jr-tickets-536420396847

​The Prophets won the 2022 Publishing Triangle Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction and the 2022 NAIBA Book of the Year Award for Fiction. It was also a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction and was named one of the best books of 2021 by Time, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post, among others. His writings have been featured in The New York Times, Essence, and The Paris Review, as well as in the critically acclaimed anthologies Four Hundred Souls and The 1619 Project.

​Listen to Jones’s interview with NPR’s Scott Simon.

​CAALS is supported by the Michigan Arts and Culture Council and the Lillian and Don Bauder Endowment.

​The Contemporary American Authors Lecture Series (CAALS)

​Established in 1989, CAALS is an annual event bringing a nationally known African American author to our campus for a public lecture and class session or conversation. Through the generous support of corporate donors, foundations, advertisers, friends, Marygrove College alumni and Board of Trustees members, and the Lillian and Donald Bauder Endowment, the series has remained free and accessible to the entire metropolitan Detroit community. To date, over 10,000 people have attended the Friday night public readings to hear outstanding writers share their work. Since 2020, thousands of others have viewed the livestreamed event via Detroit Public Television and PBS Books. 

​CAALS and Defining Detroit, a program of the Institute for Detroit Studies at Marygrove, have brought to Detroit audiences the recipients of eleven MacArthur “Genius” Grants, nine National Book Awards, eight Guggenheim Fellowships, six Pulitzer Prizes, five Pushcart Prizes, three Emmy Awards, and one Man Booker Prize. In addition, the two series have welcomed three U.S. Poets Laureate and one Presidential Inaugural Poet. Please visit the Author Archives for information about all previous CAALS guests and their visits to Marygrove.