PHOTO CREDIT | Alberto Vargas, RainRiver

The Marygrove Conservancy is excited to welcome novelist and essayist Robert Jones, Jr. as the guest author for the 34th Annual Contemporary American Authors Lecture Series (CAALS).

Robert Jones, Jr. will deliver the 2023 Bauder Lecture on Friday, April 28 @ 8pm at Marygrove.

In anticipation of his visit to Detroit this spring, Randa Literary Programs will host in-person discussion groups and virtual book discussion groups centered on Jones’ best-selling novel, The Prophets.


About the Author

Formerly known as “Son of Baldwin,” Robert Jones, Jr. is a Brooklyn-based, award-winning writer. He is the author of The New York Times bestselling novel, The Prophets, which won the 2022 Publishing Triangle Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, and was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Essence, Variety, and The Paris Review, as well as in the critically acclaimed anthologies Four Hundred Souls and The 1619 Project.

Read more of his articles, essays, and interviews here or subscribe to his newsletter, WITNESS.

About The Prophets

Isaiah was Samuel’s and Samuel was Isaiah’s. That was the way it was since the beginning, and the way it was to be until the end. In the barn they tended to the animals, but also to each other, transforming the hollowed-out shed into a place of human refuge, a source of intimacy and hope in a world ruled by vicious masters. But when an older man—a fellow slave—seeks to gain favor by preaching the master’s gospel on the plantation, the enslaved begin to turn on their own. Isaiah and Samuel’s love, which was once so simple, is seen as sinful and a clear danger to the plantation’s harmony. More at Penguin Random House

Programming for the 34th Annual American Author Lecture Series is supported by the Michigan Arts & Culture Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.


Reserve your seat at the 2023 Bauder Lecture on Friday, April 28 @ 8pm at Marygrove. Books will be available for purchase from Source Booksellers.