Two writers who were also attorneys read together from their fiction this evening. Kresge Artist Fellow Desiree Cooper will read from her short story collection, Know the Mother (Wayne State University Press), in which she explores the complex archetype of the mother in all of her incarnations, wedged between their own yearnings and their roles as daughters, sisters, grandmothers and wives.

Reading with Desiree Cooper tonight will be Seattle author Tara Conklin, whose novel, The House Girl, interweaves the story of an escaped slave with that of an attorney seeking a plaintiff in a lawsuit seeking compensation for the descendants of slaves..