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the FINALISTS

Congratulations to all of the finalists for the 2010 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 will be recognized at the October 9, 2010 Award Dinner held at Central Library in Indianapolis.

Ray Boomhower
Ray E. Boomhower is senior editor of the Indiana Historical Society’s quarterly popular history magazine Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History. Boomhower has been with the Society since 1987, beginning work for the statewide, nonprofit organization as its public relations coordinator.

A native of Mishawaka, Indiana, Boomhower graduated from Indiana University in 1982 with degrees in journalism and political science. He received his master’s degree in U.S. history from Indiana University, Indianapolis, in 1995. Before joining the Society staff, he worked in public relations for the Indiana State Museum and as a reporter for two Indiana daily newspapers, the Rensselaer Republican and the Anderson Herald. In 1999 he received the Hoosier Historian award from the Indiana Historical Society. His books have also been finalists in the annual Best Books of Indiana competition sponsored by the Indiana Center for the Book, as well as finalists in the annual Benjamin Franklin Awards from the Independent Book Publishers Association.

Along with numerous articles for Traces, the Indiana Magazine of History, Outdoor Indiana, and other history periodicals, Boomhower is the author of the books Jacob Piatt Dunn, Jr.: A Life in History and Politics, 1855-1924 (Indiana Historical Society, 1997); The Country Contributor: The Life and Times of Juliet V. Strauss (Guild Press of Indiana, 1998); Destination Indiana: Travels through Hoosier History (IHS, 2000); “But I Do Clamor”: May Wright Sewall, A Life, 1844–1920 (Guild Press, 2001); “One Shot”: The World War II Photography of John A. Bushemi (IHS Press, 2004); Gus Grissom: The Lost Astronaut (IHS Press, 2004); The Sword and the Pen: A Life of Lew Wallace (IHS Press, 2005); The Soldier’s Friend: A Life of Ernie Pyle (IHS Press,  2006); Fighting for Equality: A Life of May Wright Sewall (IHS Press, 2007); Robert F. Kennedy and the 1968 Indiana Primary (Indiana University Press, 2008); and Fighter Pilot: The World War II Career of Alex Vraciu (IHS Press, 2010).

Colleen Coble
Best-selling author Colleen Coble has written thirty novels and eight novellas. She has nearly 2 million books in print and writes romantic mysteries because she loves to see justice prevail. She is a lifelong Hoosier and graduated from Southwood High School in her hometown of Wabash before going on to Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion. She and her husband of nearly forty years still live in Wabash.

Anathema, an Amish mystery set in Parke County, Indiana, won the 2009 Best Books of Indiana Award for fiction. Her books have won or finaled in awards ranging from the Best Books of Indiana, American Christian Fiction Writers Book of the Year, Romance Writers of America’s RITA, the Holt Medallion, the Daphne du Maurier, National Readers’ Choice, and the Booksellers Best. Her Lonestar series (Lonestar Sanctuary, Lonestar Secrets and Lonestar Homecoming) first launched as exclusive books for the Doubleday Book Group and were reader favorites before being released in the general market. Her Rock Harbor mystery series (Without a Trace, Beyond a Doubt, Into the Deep) was in such demand with readers that she continued the series with Abomination, and Cry in the Night and plans more books in that perennially popular series. She had had two Women of Faith titles (Alaska Twilight and Midnight Sea.)

Colleen is CEO of American Christian Fiction Writers and is a member of Romance Writers of America. She has won the American Christian Fiction Writers Mentor of the Year award twice. When she’s not spoiling her new granddaughter, she is teaching at a writer’s conference or researching a new book. Visit her website at www.colleencoble.com.

 Andrew Levy

Andrew Levy was born and raised in suburban New Jersey.  After graduating Brown University in 1984 with degrees in Mathematics and English, he worked on Wall Street for a brief period, before receiving an M.A. in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins and a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of Pennsylvania, and joining the faculty of Butler University in 1992.  He lives in Indianapolis with his wife and son, and is currently Cooper Chair in English at Butler, where he also directs the Writer’s Studio and the MFA Program in Creative Writing. 

Levy has published The Culture And Commerce of the American Short Story (Cambridge UP, 1992), co-authored Creating Fiction:  A Writer’s Companion (Harcourt Brace, 1995), and co-edited Postmodern American Fiction (Norton, 1997), an innovative anthology that was the focus of reviews and feature articles in The New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, and elsewhere.  Levy has also published a series of articles on American culture that attracted substantial readerships and media attention.  “The Big Nap,” for instance, a meditation on Robert Kennedy, Jr., Martin Luther King, and the Midwest has been anthologized and utilized as a freshman orientation text at Midwestern colleges.  “Play Will Make you Free,” an investigation into the corporate image of Nike, was the subject of columns in Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Sun-Times, radio talk show debate, and a segment on National Public Radio’s This American Life. 

With the publication of “The Anti-Jefferson,” an essay celebrating the forgotten emancipator Robert Carter III, in early 2001, Levy’s work began to receive broader readerships.  The Anti-Jefferson” was included in Best American Essays 2002, and was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered;  David Levering Lewis, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner in biography, described the essay as “pure pleasure,” and “a model of the tour de force.” Levy’s The First Emancipator, published with Random House, was cited as one of the best books of 2005 by the Chicago Tribune, Amazon.com, and Booklist, won the Slatten biography prize from the Virginia Historical Society, and was reviewed prominently nationwide.

In 2009, Levy published A Brain Wider Than The Sky, a memoir and cultural history of migraine headaches, from ancient Mesopotamia to the present day.  Described as “a most remarkable book” by Oliver Sacks, Brain Wider was reviewed favorably in Time (“[Levy] collects headaches like rare butterflies, and he has a rare, possibly singular gift for fitting words to them”), Newsweek, Washington Post (“Andrew Levy’s beautiful memoir…is welcome relief”), among other venues, and was named as one of the best books of 2009 by the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.

Douglas Light
Douglas Light was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. He graduated from Indiana University with a BA in economics and earned an MA in creative writing from City College of New York. His first novel, East Fifth Bliss, won the 2007 Benjamin Franklin Award for Best Fiction. The screen adaptation, which he co-wrote, was filmed in 2010. It stars Golden Globe winner Michael C. Hall, Lucy Liu, Peter Fonda, and Brie Larson.

Light received a 2010 NoMAA writers grant, was selected as a finalist for the 2002 James Jones First Novel Fellowship, and has been published in Narrative, Guernica, Alaska Quarterly Review, Failbetter, and other publications. His fiction was selected for inclusion in O. Henry Prize Stories 2003 and Best American Nonrequired Reading 2003 anthologies.  He lives in New York City.

More information is available at www.douglaslight.com

 Micah Ling
When Micah Ling decided that she wanted a small-campus college experience, she found DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. After graduating from DePauw as an English major, she moved just down the road to Bloomington, Indiana. Ling earned her MA in 20^th Century American Literature and her MFA in poetry at Indiana University. Ling has taught in the English departments at Indiana University, Butler University, DePauw University, and Franklin College. She is currently teaching part-time at both DePauw University and Franklin College. She just recently taught for the 2010 Indiana University Writer’s Conference in Bloomington, Indiana.

Greg Schwipps

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.