Proof: A Midwest Lit Fest

Presented by the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Awards. Jenna Voris is the award-winning author of multiple books for all ages, including Every Time You Hear That Song, Say A Little Prayer, and The Long Con. Voris was born and raised in central Indiana, where she also attended high school and college. The Midwest is in her blood, and it comes out in her YA stories—books about queer girls in small southern or Midwestern towns trying to find their place in the world. She now lives in Washington, D.C., where she spends most of her time perfecting her road trip playlists and desperately trying to keep her cat from eating her houseplants. Máire Roche is the USA Today Bestselling author of Bromantasy and many other titles for both kids and adults. A former teacher, she now spends her days writing stories full of magic, mystery, and wonder. When she isn’t writing, Máire enjoys planting pollinator gardens, swimming, and spending time with her wife. She lives in the Midwest with her wife and their only slightly evil cat, Lulu.

Join Manón Voice, Korie Griggs, and Ajanaé Dawkins a conversation moderated by Kelsey Johnson Lyons exploring how poetry explores spirituality, honors the ancestors and place, and allows space in our lives for wonder. The conversation will be preceded by a reading. Join Manón Voice, Korie Griggs, and Ajanaé Dawkins a conversation moderated by Kelsey Johnson Lyons exploring how poetry explores spirituality, honors the ancestors and place, and allows space in our lives for wonder. The conversation will be preceded by a reading. Manón Voice is a native of Indianapolis, Indiana and is a multi-hyphenate, poet and writer, spoken word artist, film producer, hip-hop emcee, educator, and community builder. The spirit of her work finds its niche at the intersection of art and activism with an ethos of bridging the past, present and future, as part of prophetic imagination. Ajanaé Dawkins is a poet, conceptual artist and theologian raised between Metro Detroit and New Rochelle, NY. She works through poetry, visual art, performance, and audio to explore the politics of faith, grief, and intimate relationships between Black women. As a theologian, she blends cultural criticism, memoir, and theology as autotheory to consider the relationship between Black church history, spirituality, and creation. Her work has appeared in Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, The Rumpus, The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, and more. Her exhibition, No One Teaches Us How To Be Daughters, debuted at Urban Arts Space in 2024. Her chapbook, BLOOD-FLEX, won the New Delta Review prize. Excerpts of her docu-poetics film project, The BLOOD-FLEX Project are selections in Haus für Poesie Film Festival in Berlin and the Zuma International Film Festival in Abuja. Ajanaé is an Elizabeth George Grant Recipient and Writing Freedom Fellow. She was the Taft Museum’s 2022 Duncanson Artist in Residence and Ohio State University’s 2024 UAS Community Artist in Residence. She is a fellow of Torch Literary, The Watering Hole, and Pink Door. She cohosted the VS Podcast with Brittany Rogers at the Poetry Foundation. Ajanaé is the founder and editor-in-chief of OILY, a spiritual archival project. Korie Griggs is a poet, multidisciplinary artist, arts administrator, and grief practitioner whose work explores memory, ancestry, love, and transformation. Through poetry, visual art, and storytelling, she creates spaces for reflection, connection, and belonging. She is the author of Suffer Well: Poems for the Grieving and And So It Is; both are her invitation to embrace life's endings and beginnings with curiosity, reverence, and hope. Moderated by Kelsey Johnson Lyons, a wife, mom, daughter, sister, friend, educator, poet, and lifelong student. She is a company member of the Indianapolis Shakespeare Company. She enjoys reading, hiking, writing and looking for quiet moments of beauty and joy.

Presented by Conversation Piece Podcast and Tomorrow Bookstore Tom Lin was born in China and immigrated to the United States when he was four. A graduate of Pomona College, he also holds a PhD from the University of California, Davis. His first novel, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu, won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. He teaches English and creative writing at the University of Iowa. Patrick Armstrong (he/him) is many things: podcaster, photographer, parent. During the day, he coordinates digital content for Downtown Indy Alliance, which means tackling all forms of production, pre- and post-. During another time of day, he hosts two podcasts: one about the city of Indianapolis and the people in it, another about the experience of being an Asian adoptee in America. Finally, at all other times he is a parent, partner, and person just trying to make it out here. He is also interested in eschewing normal bios for whatever this is. Hello! About Conversation Piece Conversation Piece Podcast is the show where we expand the story of Indianapolis through conversations with the people who make her up.

Presented by Loudmouth Books Austin Channing Brown is a New York Times bestselling author and speaker providing inspired leadership on racial justice in America. She is the author of I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness, a young readers version of I'm Still Here, and Full of Myself: Black Womanhood and the Journey to Self Possession. Austin's undergraduate work was in business management. She also earned a master's degree in social justice. And in 2024, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Oakland University in Michigan. She's made her home metro-Detroit. Leah Johnson (she/her) is an eternal midwesterner and author of award-winning books for children and young adults. Her bestselling debut YA novel, You Should See Me in a Crown, was a Stonewall Honor Book, the inaugural Reese's Book Club YA pick, and named one of TIME magazine's 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time. She is also the author of the Lambda Literary Award finalist, Ellie Engle Saves Herself, the editor of the USA Today bestselling middle grade anthology, Black Girl Power, and the co-author of the Good Morning America YA Book Club pick, There’s Always Next Year with George M. Johnson. When she’s not writing, you can find her at Loudmouth Books, her Indianapolis-based independent bookstore that specializes in highlighting the work of marginalized authors and uplifting banned or challenged books.

Presented by Butler MFA Hanif Abdurraqib is an award-winning poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His newest release, There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension (Random House, 2024) was a New York Times Bestseller and longlisted for the National Book Award in nonfiction. His previous book, A Little Devil In America (Random House, 2021) was a winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and the Gordon Burn Prize. In 2021, Abdurraqib was named a MacArthur Fellow, and in 2024 was named a Windham-Campbell Prize recipient. He is a graduate of Beechcroft High School. Marcus Wicker was born in Ann Arbor and raised in Ypsilanti, Michigan. He is the author of three books of poetry: DEAR MOTHERSHIP (forthcoming from Ecco, Sept. ’26), Silencer (Mariner/Ecco, 2017)—winner of the Society of Midland Authors Award—and Maybe the Saddest Thing (Harper Perennial, 2012), selected by D.A. Powell for the National Poetry Series. A 2023 - 2024 Harvard Radcliffe Institute Fellow, his honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, the Poetry Society of America’s Lyric Poetry Award, a Pushcart Prize, and Ruth Lilly Fellowship, as well as fellowships from The Fine Arts Work Center, and Cave Canem. Wicker’s poems have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The Atlantic, Oxford American, and Poetry Magazine. He is a Professor and the Orgill Chair of English at the University of Memphis, where he teaches in the MFA program.