Indiana Authors Award 2015

From the Eugene and Marilyn Glick  Indiana Authors Award website:

Poets Marianne Boruch and Adrian Matejka to receive national and regional awards from Library Foundation, three Emerging Author finalists selected

INDIANAPOLIS — For the first time, two poets have been selected as winners of the Indiana Authors Award. Purdue University professorMarianne Boruch is the winner of the $10,000 National Author prize given by the 2015 Eugene & Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award.Adrian Matejka, Lilly Professor/Poet-in-Resident at Indiana University-Bloomington, has been named the Regional Author winner, earning him a $7,500 prize. The National and Regional winners, along with finalists in the Emerging Author category, will be honored at the seventh-annual Indiana Authors Award Dinner on October 10, 2015, at the Central Library in Indianapolis.

“I am grateful to be invited into the company of previous Indiana Authors Award winners such as Susan Neville, Barbara Shoup, Michael Martone, Helen Frost and many others,” said Boruch. “Thanks to the late Eugene and Marilyn Glick for bringing attention to writing and reading as an art and act of courage and invention, and for honoring the ancient notion of the library —  a lightning bolt and beloved storage unit for human culture.”

Marianne Boruch

This annual award program recognizes Indiana authors’ contributions to the literary landscape in Indiana and across the nation. The Eugene & Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award is a program of The Indianapolis Public Library Foundation and is funded through the generosity of The Glick Fund, a fund of Central Indiana Community Foundation.

Award nominations were submitted from across the state in early spring. Any published writer who was born in Indiana or has lived in Indiana for at least five years was eligible. An eight-member, statewide Award Panel selected the National and Regional winners and the three Emerging Author finalists from the pool of publicly nominated authors.

National Author – $10,000 prize: A writer with Indiana ties, but whose work is known and read throughout the country. National authors are evaluated on their entire body of work. This award recipient will also designate a $2,500 grant for the public library of his or her choosing.

2015 winner: Marianne Boruch

Adrian Matejka

Regional Author – $7,500 prize: A writer who is well-known and respected throughout the state of Indiana. Regional authors were evaluated on their entire body of work. This award recipient will also designate a $2,500 grant for the public library of his or her choosing.

2015 winner: Adrian Matejka

Emerging Author – $5,000 prize: A writer who has published no more than two books during his/her lifetime. The title(s) must have been published within the last 10 years. Emerging authors were evaluated on these specific works. The award recipient will designate a $2,500 grant for the public library of his or her choosing. The Emerging Author winner will be named at the Oct. 10 Award Dinner.

2015 finalists: Laura Bates, Skila Brown and Clifford Garstang

The only other poets to win Indiana Authors Awards are Norbert Krapf (Regional 2014), Miocah Ling (Emerging 2011), and helen Frost (Regional 2011).

Note that the Emerging Artist Award will be announced later. One of the finalists, Skila Brown, specializes in novels in verse.

Skila Brown

Skila Brown is the author of “Caminar,” a novel in verse set in 1981 Guatemala, about a boy who survives the massacre of his village and must decide what being a man during a time of war really means. Forthcoming books include the picture book “Slickety Quick: Poems About Sharks” and the verse novel “To Stay Alive: Mary Ann Graves and the Tragic Journey of the Donner Party,” all from Candlewick Press. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She grew up in Kentucky and Tennessee, lived for a bit in Guatemala, and now resides with her family in Indiana.

For more information, visit www.skilabrown.com.