# Indiana Authors Awards

The Indiana Authors Awards, also known as the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Awards, is a literary awards program that recognizes and honors authors from Indiana and literary works about Indiana. In 2020, awards were given in eight categories, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry, children’s literature, young adult literature, drama, genre and emerging. The awards program runs biennially, with books published in 2020 and 2021 honored in 2022. Winners receive a cash prize, an Indiana limestone award trophy, and the opportunity to select an Indiana library to receive a donation. The 2024 winners include the following categories: nonfiction, fiction, debut, genre, poetry, young adult, middle grade, children's, and drama.

## History

The awards program was founded in 2009 by philanthropists Eugene and Marilyn Glick, partnering with The Indianapolis Public Library Foundation to create a program which recognized authors annually. Honors were awarded to authors in the three main categories of national, regional, and emerging, with some years including recognition for lifetime achievement and general excellence.
In 2018, Glick Philanthropies announced a desire to expand the awards program. After a year hiatus, in 2019 Glick Philanthropies partnered with Indiana Humanities to offer an expanded program, awarding honors to books every other year and a new Literary Champion Award. The 2020 awards included books in eight categories and recognized the Indiana Writers Center as Literary Champion. In the spring of 2022, the Indiana Authors Awards Tour brought recent award-winning authors to Indiana communities. The most recent awards cycle occurred in August 2024.

## Winners of awards for lifetime bodies of work

Following is a subset of the awards granted, focusing just on top honors that are for authors' complete lifetime works. These primarily are just the National Winners, the Regional Winners, and the Lifetime Achievement Awards which were all granted on basis of persons' entire body of works. It omits two National Finalist and four Regional Finalist awards given in 2009-10, the first years of the program, and not offered in any later year. It includes two "Excellence" awards given, and it omits "Emerging Winner" and "Emerging Finalist" awards. In 2019, no awards were granted, and the focus of the program shifted to make awards for recent books in various categories (therefore not for entire bodies of work). No awards were given in 2021. In 2020 and 2022, there appears to be only one "Lifetime Achievement" award granted, included below.
The remaining awards through 2024 make up a set of authors comparable to other writers' halls of fame. These awards, for entire bodies of authors' complete work, are:
| Year | Award | Author |
| 2009 | National Winner | James Alexander Thom |
| 2009 | Regional Winner | Susan Neville |
| 2010 | National Winner | Scott Russell Sanders |
| 2010 | Regional Winner | Ray Boomhower |
| 2011 | National Winner | Margaret McMullan |
| 2011 | Regional Winner | Helen Frost |
| 2012 | Lifetime Achievement | Dan Wakefield |
| 2012 | National Winner | John Green |
| 2012 | Regional Winner | Barbara Shoup |
| 2013 | National Winner | Michael Martone |
| 2013 | Regional Winner | James H. Madison |
| 2014 | National Winner | Michael Shelden |
| 2014 | Regional Winner | Norbert Krapf |
| 2015 | Lifetime Achievement | Mari Evans |
| 2015 | National Winner | Marianne Boruch |
| 2015 | Regional Winner | Adrian Matejka |
| 2016 | National Winner | Karen Joy Fowler |
| 2016 | Regional Winner | Philip Gulley |
| 2016 | Genre Excellence Winner (children’s picture books) | April Pulley Sayre |
| 2017 | National Winner | Kekla Magoon |
| 2017 | Regional Winner | Lori Rader-Day |
| 2017 | Genre Excellence Winner (middle-grade fiction) | John David Anderson |
| 2018 | National Winner | Kimberly Brubaker Bradley |
| 2018 | Regional Winner | Sandy Eisenberg Sasso |
| 2018 | Lifetime Achievement | James Alexander Thom |
| 2020 | Literary Champion | Indiana Writers Center |
| 2022 | Literary Champion | JL Kato |
| 2022 | Lifetime Achievement | James H. Madison |
| 2024 | Literary Champion | Tony Brewer |
| 2024 | Lifetime Achievement | Susan Neville |

## Category Winners

| Year | Award | Author | Book |
| 2020 | Nonfiction | Ross Gay | The Book of Delights |
| 2020 | Fiction | Chris White | The Life List of Adrian Mandrick |
| 2020 | Emerging | Melissa Stephenson | Driven: A White-Knuckled Ride to Heartbreak and Back |
| 2020 | Genre | Maurice Broaddus | Pimp My Airship |
| 2020 | Poetry | Eugene Gloria | Sightseer in this Killing City |
| 2020 | Young Adult | Saundra Mitchell | All the Things We Do in the Dark |
| 2020 | Children's | Phillip Hoose | Attucks!: Oscar Robertson and the Basketball Team That Awakened a City |
| 2020 | Drama | James Still | The Jack Plays |
| 2022 | Nonfiction | Craig Fehrman | Author in Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote |
| 2022 | Fiction | Susan Neville | The Town of Whispering Dolls |
| 2022 | Debut | Ashley C. Ford | Somebody's Daughter: A Memoir |
| 2022 | Genre | Paul Allor | Hollow Heart |
| 2022 | Poetry | Ross Gay | Be Holding |
| 2022 | Young Adult | Leah Johnson | You Should See Me in a Crown |
| 2022 | Middle Grade | Helen Frost | All He Knew |
| 2022 | Children's | Kim Howard | Grace and Box |
| 2024 | Nonfiction | Edward Fujawa | Vanished Indianapolis |
| 2024 | Fiction | Tess Gunty | The Rabbit Hutch |
| 2024 | Debut | Brittany Means | Hell If We Don’t Change Our Ways |
| 2024 | Genre | Rebecca McKanna | Don’t Forget the Girl |
| 2024 | Poetry | George Kalamaras | To Sleep in the Horse’s Belly: My Greek Poets and the Aegean Inside Me |
| 2024 | Young Adult | Kekla Magoon | The Minus-One Club |
| 2024 | Middle Grade | Maurice Broaddus | Unfadeable |
| 2024 | Children's | Janna Matthies | Here We Come! |
| 2024 | Drama | Jennifer Blackmer | Predictor |