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the FINALISTS

Congratulations to all of the finalists for the 2009 Eugene & Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award. These authors represent some of the best that Indiana literature has to offer, and are truly deserving of recognition. The winners and finalists for all three categories were recognized at the September 26, 2009 Award Dinner held at Central Library in Indianapolis.

National Finalists:

Margaret McMullan
Margaret McMullan writes mostly fiction for both adults and young adults, and she is especially interested in how historical events affect ordinary people. She is the author of six novels including In My Mother’s House, Cashay, a Chicago Public Library 2009 Teen Book Selection, and When I Crossed No-Bob, a 2008 Parents’ Choice Silver Honor, a 2007 School Library Journal Best Book, an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults, a Booklist 2009 Best Book For Young Adults, a 2008 finalist for the Willie Morris Prize for Southern Fiction, and a 2008 Horace Mann Upstander Honor book. Both When I Crossed No-Bob and How I Found the Strong won the Mississippi Arts and Letters Award for Best Fiction (in 2004 and 2008) and the Indiana Best Young Adult Book (in 2005 and 2008). How I Found the Strong also won the 2006 Award for Fiction from the Mississippi Library Association, was named an ALA 2005 Notable Social Studies Book, and a Booklist’s Top Ten First Novel for Youth.

McMullan’s essays and short stories have appeared in Glamour, The Chicago Tribune, National Geographic for Kids, Southern Accents, The Indianapolis Star, TriQuarterly, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Greensboro Review, The Southern California Anthology, Mississippi Magazine, Other Voices, Boulevard, Ploughshares, and The Sun. She received a Special Mention in the 2005 Pushcart Prize collection and twice she received the Individual Artist Fellowship from the Indiana Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts. She was the 2007 Eudora Welty Visiting Writer at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, and she continues to teach writing workshops in local and inner city libraries and schools. She is currently a board member of the New Harmony Project and a professor of English at the University of Evansville, in Evansville, Indiana, where she’s working on a collection of stories. Her new young adult novel called Sources of Light is due out in the fall of 2010 from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. She lives in Evansville, Indiana with her husband, Patrick O’Connor and their son, James.

More information available at http://www.margaretmcmullan.com

Scott Russell Sanders
Scott Sanders was born in Tennessee and grew up in Ohio. He studied at Brown University before going on, as a Marshall Scholar, to complete a Ph.D. in English literature at Cambridge University. In 1971 he joined the faculty of Indiana University, where he taught until 2009, retiring as Distinguished Professor of English.

He has published twenty books, including novels, collections of stories and essays, and personal narratives. He has also published seven storybooks for children. His work has appeared in such magazines as Harper’s, Audubon, Orion, and The Georgia Review, and it has been reprinted in The Art of the Essay, American Nature Writing, The Norton Reader, and other anthologies. His collection of essays, The Paradise of Bombs, won the Associated Writing Programs Award in Creative Nonfiction in 1987. Staying Put, a celebration of the commitment to place, won the Ohioana Book Award in 1994. Writing from the Center, an account of the quest for a meaningful and moral life, won the 1996 Great Lakes Book Award. His more recent books include Hunting for Hope (1998), an exploration of sources for healing and renewal; The Country of Language (1999), an account of experiences that have shaped his work as a writer; The Force of Spirit (2000), meditations on the sacred in everyday life; and A Private History of Awe (2006), a coming-of-age memoir, love story, and spiritual testament, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His latest book is A Conservationist Manifesto (2009), which lays out the ecological, ethical, and practical grounds for shifting from a culture based on consumption to a culture based on stewardship.

Sanders has received fellowships for writing from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Indiana Arts Commission, the Lilly Endowment, and the Guggenheim Foundation. His work has been selected for The Best American Essays, The Kenyon Review Award for Literary Excellence, the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award, the John Burroughs Essay Award, the Indiana Humanities Award, and the Mark Twain Award. For his collected work in nonfiction, he was honored in 1995 with a Lannan Literary Award.

In his books he is concerned with our place in nature, the practice of community, the relationship between culture and geography, and the search for a spiritual path. He and his wife, Ruth, a biochemist, have reared two children in their home town of Bloomington, in the hardwood hill country of the White River Valley in southern Indiana.

More information available at http://www.scottrussellsanders.com

Regional Finalists:

Jared Carter
Jared Carter has published four collections of poems. His first, Work, for the Night Is Coming, received the Walt Whitman Award for 1980. His second, After the Rain, won the Poets’ Prize for 1994. He has received a Guggenheim fellowship, two creative-writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Indiana Governor’s Arts Award. He has served as a literature panelist with the National Endowment for the Arts.

More information available at http://www.jaredcarter.com

James H. Madison
James H. Madison is the Thomas and Kathryn Miller Professor of History and former chair of the Department of History at Indiana University, Bloomington. More than thirty-five years ago he began the quest to understand Indiana and its people. He’s still on that journey in his teaching, research, and writing.

Jim’s books include a general overview history of the state (The Indiana Way): a biography of one of the state’s leading businessmen and philanthropists (Eli Lilly); a case study of Indiana’s struggles with race (A Lynching in the Heartland); and the story of a young Indiana woman in World War II (Slinging Doughnuts for the Boys). He’s written dozens of essays on Indiana subjects ranging from Wendell Willkie to Civil War memory and commemoration. And he has spoken to audiences across the state, from fourth graders to seniors, conduced seminars and workshops for teachers, and worked with museums, historical societies, and public libraries in the pursuit of learning about Indiana.

Professor Madison’s teaching on the Bloomington campus has ranged from the freshman introductory US history class to courses on World War II and Indiana history. Jim’s work to help students learn about the challenges of the 21st century includes his role as Director of IU’s Liberal Arts and Management Program. Jim’s teaching honors include the Sylvia E. Bowmen Distinguished Teaching Award, the James P. Holland Award for Exemplary Teaching, and the IU Student Alumni Association “Student Choice” Award. He has also taught, as a Fulbright Professor, at Hiroshima University, Japan, and at the University of Kent, Canterbury, England. From 1976 to 1993 he served as editor of the Indiana Magazine of History. He is the recipient of the Indiana Historical Society’s Hoosier Historian Award.

More information available at http://www.indiana.edu/~histweb/faculty/madison.shtml

Emerging Finalists:

Kathleen Hughes
Kathleen Hughes was born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana. She graduated from Yale University with a BA in English and earned an MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. She currently lives with her husband and two young children in Providence, Rhode Island and teaches high school English at an independent school. Dear Mrs. Lindbergh, published by WW Norton, is her first novel. Ms. Hughes has also published stories and essays in Altared (Vintage Books), Pieces (MTV/Pocket Books), and The Land Grant College Review. As a staff writer for the Providence Phoenix newspaper, Hughes published work in the Boston Phoenix and on AlterNet and won awards from the Rhode Island and New England Press Associations. She has won fellowships from the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, the Vermont Studio Center, Sewanee Writer’s Conference, and Portsmouth Abbey School.

More information available at www.kathleenhughes.com

Greg Schwipps
Greg Schwipps was born and raised on a working farm in Milan, Indiana. He spent high school and college summers shearing Christmas trees and working as a laborer at Versailles State Park. He graduated from Milan Jr./Sr. High School in 1991 and attended DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, where he majored in English Writing. Following his graduation from DePauw, he attended Southern Illinois University at Carbondale for his MFA in creative writing. His thesis was a book-length collection of essays about growing up with his brothers and fishing in farm ponds. Schwipps is now an associate professor in DePauw’s English Department, where he teaches a wide range of classes.

Schwipps’ creative nonfiction articles and essays have appeared in outdoor magazines like Outdoor Indiana, Indiana Game & Fish and In-Fisherman. One of his short stories appeared on Esquire magazine’s website. His first novel, What This River Keeps, was published by Ghost Road Press in the spring of 2009.

A lifelong fascination with fishing and rural living has deeply influenced his life and work. He and his wife Alissa live with their two dogs on ten acres of woods near Morgan County’s town of Wilbur. He spends much of his free time catfishing in the nearby West Fork of the White River.

More information available at www.gregschwipps.com