2022 Awards

Debut

Ashley C. Ford

Somebody’s Daughter: A Memoir by Ashley C. Ford of Indianapolis. A memoir about the complexity of childhood in a family fragmented by incarceration, the physical changes in adolescence that draw unwanted attention from men, and a journey to bring together the threads of identity and to understand complicated familial love.

Fiction

Susan Neville

The Town of Whispering Dolls by Susan Neville of Indianapolis. Stories about the residents of the rust belt town of Whispering Dolls, who dream of a fabled and illusory past even as new technologies reshape their world into something deeply strange.

nonFiction

Craig Fehrman

Author in Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote by Craig Fehrman of Bloomington. The story of America’s presidents as authors. Addressing everything from beloved tomes to volumes lost to history, Author in Chief unearths insights about the presidents through their literary works and offers a window into their public and private lives.

Genre

Paul Allor

Hollow Heart by Paul Allor of Indianapolis. A graphic novel that uses a queer monster love story to examine the choices we make between giving loved ones what they want and giving them what we think they need.

Poetry

Ross Gay

Be Holding by Ross Gay of Bloomington. A lyrical appreciation of legendary basketball player Julius Erving — aka Dr. J — and how the imagination might bring us closer to one another.

Young Adult

Leah Johnson

You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson of Indianapolis. The story of how a girl who has always believed she’s too Black, too poor and too awkward to shine in her small midwestern town makes her dreams come true.

Middle Grade

Helen Frost

All He Knew by Helen Frost of Fort Wayne. A novel in verse inspired by true events surrounding a young deaf boy during World War II, the sister who loves him and the conscientious objector who helps him.

Children’s

Kim Howard

Grace and Box, by Kim Howard of Bloomington. A picture book in which a young girl befriends a box and they go on lively adventures together.

Lifetime Achievement

James Madison

With a career spanning more than four decades, Madison is an award-winning teacher and author who serves as the Thomas and Kathryn Miller Professor Emeritus of History at Indiana University and is an “Indiana Living Legend,” as designated by the Indiana Historical Society. 

Widely recognized as one of the state’s preeminent historians, Madison has authored books delving into a wide range of Hoosier history, including: The Indiana Way: A State History (1986); Eli Lilly: A Life, 1885–1977 (1989); A Lynching in the Heartland: Race and Memory in America (2001); Slinging Doughnuts for the Boys: An American Woman in World War II (2007); and Hoosiers: A New History of Indiana (2014). His most recent book, The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland (2020), is shortlisted in the nonfiction category of the 2022 Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Awards.

Literary Champion

JL Kato

Kato is a past president of Etheridge Knight Inc. and Brick Street Poetry — organizations that sponsor literary events, readings, contests and publications — He’s also a cofounder and curator of Poetry in Free Motion, a project that combined quilting and poetry.

As a member of the Indiana Writers Center, he was a participant, then moderator, of the Poetry Salon, which encouraged poets to improve their writing and critique skills. He also served for six years as poetry editor of Flying Island online literary journal.