For Immediate Release Contact: Renée Ahee, 313-927-1446 or rahee@marygrove.edu

Detroit Poet Returns with “So Many Selves”

Lawrence Joseph Presents New Book October 20

Detroit, September 29, 2005—Marygrove College hosts the return of Detroit native and second-generation Arab American poet Lawrence Joseph on Thursday, October 20 at 7:30 p.m., in Alumnae Hall, Madame Cadillac Building. Joseph will present his new volume of poems, Into It, which includes a long poem "Woodward Avenue." Other poems in this volume are based on his harrowing experience on 9-11. Since that date, he has written of the tensions of being an Arab American in the post-9/11 US from the perspective of one who lives blocks away from Ground Zero. He will also read from his newly issued collection Codes, Precepts, Biases and Taboos: Poems 1973-1993, the collected poems from his first three books: Shouting at No One (1983), Curriculum Vitae (1988), and Before Our Eyes (1993). Besides poetry, Joseph has written a work of creative nonfiction Lawyerland: What Lawyers Talk About When They Talk about Law (1997) as well as numerous essays and reviews.

He grew up in Royal Oak, attended the University of Detroit High School, the University of Michigan, Cambridge University and the University of Michigan School of Law. He later clerked for Michigan Supreme Court Justice G. Mennen Williams and then practiced and taught law. Now living in New York City, he is Professor of Law at St. John's University School of Law. He has also taught creative writing at Princeton University. His honors include two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a Hopwood Award for poetry and a fellowship for study at Cambridge University.

He participated in Marygrove's 2001 commemoration of Detroit's tricentennial.

This is a “Defining Detroit” event of Marygrove’s Institute for Detroit Studies and the English and Modern Languages Department, an interdisciplinary series of public exhibits, lectures, performances, readings and discussions that explore different aspects of Detroit life. Previous presenters include Detroit poet laureate Naomi Long Madgett, novelist Joyce Carol Oates, historian Thomas Sugrue, poet Philip Levine and musical conductor and choirmaster Brazeal Dennard. The Lawrence Joseph reading and book signing t is free and open to the public.

San Francisco Chronicle critic Allan M. Jalon wrote: “Long before he saw the ruins of other cities, Joseph grew up in Detroit. . . . Like that city, his writing doesn’t show off. But he learned to peer beneath surfaces, to find tensions in irreducible realities of class and race, to understand ‘Detroit skin, the toughest in the world.’” His new work has received outstanding reviews in the New York Times.

For more information, call Dr. Frank Rashid at 313-927-1448 or visit www.marygrove.edu. A photo of Lawrence Joseph is available at http://www.marygrove.edu/events/Lawrence_Joseph_HiRes.jpg. Marygrove College is located at 8425 W. McNichols Rd. in Detroit. More than 1,200 students attend classes in its undergraduate and graduate programs in education, business, human resource management, social justice, social work, science, theater, music and the fine arts.

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