Beatty is the author of three novels: The White Boy Shuffle (1996), Tuff (2000), and Slumberland (2008), and two books of poetry:  Big Bank Take Little Bank (1991) and Joker, Joker, Deuce (1994). He also edited Hokum: An Anthology of African-American Humor (2006).  He was the recipient of the first Grand Poetry Slam Championship of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in 1990.

Visit the 2012 CAALS event and author profile.

Read more: Paul Beatty 2012

Marygrove's English and Modern Languages Department is pleased to announce that the award-winning poet and literary scholar, Harryette Mullen, will be the twenty-third guest in its Contemporary American Authors Lecture Series. Professor Mullen will deliver the Lillian and Don Bauder Lecture in Alumnae Hall at 8 p.m. on Friday, April 15, 2011.

The author of five books of poetry, Harryette Mullen has taught at Cornell University and now teaches creative writing and African-American literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has received the Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative American Poetry, a PEN Beyond Margins Award, and the 2010 Jackson Poetry Prize, and she has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Mullen was born in Alabama and raised in Texas. She received her bachelor's degree from the University of Texas, Austin and her master's degree and Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Read more: Harryette Mullen 2011

The Boston Globe celebrates him as “one of this nation’s finest writers.” The Austin Chronicle calls him “one of the most humane, insightful, powerful prose stylists working today in any genre….also one of the most radical.” Each novel he publishes, says The Philadelphia Inquirer, “is an event, a literary feast for lovers of the written word. . . . There are few contemporary writers as consistently fine….” Writing in The New Yorker, Ben Greenman observes, “All his works share an abiding interest in the moral dimensions of everyday life….”

The Marygrove College Department of English and Modern Languages is pleased to announce that mystery writer, novelist, and social commentator Walter Mosley will be the twenty-second guest—and the first mystery writer— in its Contemporary American Authors Lecture Series. He will deliver the Lillian and Donald Bauder Lecture at 8 p.m. on Friday, April 16, 2010 in Alumnae Hall. Afterward, he will sign copies of his works, which will be available for purchase.

Read more: Walter Mosley 2010