Debora Curry
English Dept - Administrative Assistant
Email: debora.curry@gcccd.edu
Office Hours: Monday-Friday 8am to 10am and 2pm to 4pm - email Debora for link for her Zoom Office hours
Source: The Gallery, 1970: A Photographic Directory of the Grossmont College Staff. El Cajon, CA: Grossmont Junior College District, 1970. p28. [Cropped.]
Source: The Gallery: A Photographic Directory of Grossmont College Staff. El Cajon, CA: Grossmont Junior College, 1974. p76.
Source: Davidson, Michael. "The Poets of San Diego." Photo credit: Jenny Wren. San Diego Reader (San Diego, CA) 20 February 1975: p1. Reprinted with permission, courtesy of the San Diego Reader Archives.
Enrolling in Michigan State University with aspirations to be an architect, Lester Lloyd Norwood, Jr. instead graduated in 1963 with a major in Social Sciences, after which he immediately headed to San Jose State College to earn his Master's Degree in English.
1974 issue of poetry journal, Cafeteria, edited by Lloyd Norwood |
When his graduate studies were completed, Norwood was hired into Grossmont's English Department in fall of 1968. Besides his contributions to reading and composition, Norwood taught introductory literature courses as well as Mythology. Norwood was also a poet and, starting in 1972, began teaching Poetry Writing for the Department.
Wanting to build the critical mass of the Creative Writing program at the College, Norwood was responsible for bringing new and cutting-edge authors to the campus. In the fall of 1974, Norwood began what would evolve into the English Department's Fall Readings Series and spring Literary Arts Festival, bringing to campus such notable poets as Ai, Michael McClure, and Diane Wakoski, W. S. Merwin, Carl Rakosi, Sherril Jaffe, and Philip Levine—a fellow Michigander, future U.S. Poet Laureate, and CSU professor Norwood with whom Norwood became acquainted while at San Jose State College.
Norwood also allied himself in 1972 with San Diego State College professors Fred Moramarco, Peter Olafioye (who was teaching part-time at Grossmont College), Rick Demarinis and Karl Keller, to produce the biannual poetry anthology, Cafeteria. The journal featured local faculty and student talent and became required reading for creative writing classes at San Diego State College and Grossmont College (presumably in Norwood's own Poetry Writing classes). After traveling to Guatemala in 1974, Norwood would take over as editor of Cafeteria, by which time Creative Writing colleague Glenda Richter had also joined the staff as one of the journal's Associate Editors.
By summer of 1976, after only eight years of service to the District, Norwood abandoned teaching altogether, and no further issues of Cafeteria were ever published. It would take another three years before Glenda Richter, part-time instructor Verena Anderson, and the inaugural issue of FirstDraft Literary Magazine would fill the gap left in Cafeteria's wake.
In 1991, while living in Silver Lake, Los Angeles County, Lester "Lloyd" Norwood, Jr. suffered a fatal heart attack and died at 49 years of age.
Debora Curry
English Dept - Administrative Assistant
Email: debora.curry@gcccd.edu
Office Hours: Monday-Friday 8am to 10am and 2pm to 4pm - email Debora for link for her Zoom Office hours
8800 Grossmont College Drive
El Cajon, California 92020
619-644-7000
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