Although classes have not started, Indianapolis has many literary events to fill your last days of summer or get you acquainted with our always busy city. Every month Butler University, the MFA program, and the creative community of Indianapolis host a variety of events ensuring you’ll never have a lack of things to do.
Events at Butler
Sunday, 8/21 -Welcome (back) Party
ECCW, 4:00pm
All new and current students, faculty and staff to are invited to the ECCW for the annual party celebrating the start of a new school year. Plans include heavy appetizers catered by Duos, croquet in the yard, and fun conversation. An orientation for new students will precede the party at 3:00pm. All are welcome to bring a +1, but please no children under age 21.
Wednesday, 8/24 – Classes Begin
ECCW
In addition to four workshops, the fall semester includes electives like Reading Like a Writer, Writing in the Schools, and Prose Poems and Flash Fiction. Most of the MFA classes are held in the ECCW, a beautiful, historic house owned by Butler’s MFA. Students are welcome to bring snacks or make a cup of tea or coffee and make themselves at home.
Events in Indy
8/9 – Ross Gay
Bloomington, 5:30 PM
Award Winning Poet Ross Gay will speak at Bloom Magazine Book Club. In each edition of Bloom, a noted author or literary personage will recommend a book. Two months later Bloom will host a Book Club Party at a local venue where the recommender will give a short talk and lead a discussion about the book.
This issue’s book is Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay, who will be speaking at the free event.
Ross Gay’s most recent book Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, is the winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude is currently a nominee for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award and a finalist for the Ohioana Book Award. Catalog was also a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Poetry, the Balcones Poetry Prize, and it was nominated for an NAACP Image Award.
8/10 – Robert Snow
Irvington Library, 6:30 PM
Adult are invited as retired IPD Detective Robert Snow discusses his recent autobiography, “Portrait of a Past Life Skeptic: The True Story of a Policy Detective’s Reincarnation.” He tells of past life regression done in response to a dare, ends up researching one of the people he was in his past life, and learns that what he saw reflects the reality of his previous life. Books will be available for sale and signing courtesy of Bookmamas.
8/15 – Dan Wakefield’s “Uncle Dan’s Story Hour”
The Red Key Tavern, 6:00 PM
Visit the Legendary Red Key Tavern for UNCLE DAN’S STORY HOUR. Only 48 tickets available ($15 each) for this special night featuring Indiana author and screenwriter Dan Wakefield. With host Will Higgins from the Indianapolis Star, it’s your chance to hear life stories from a master of the word. This show will be recorded live and broadcast at future dates on 90.1 WFYI Public Radio Indianapolis.
8/22 – Barbara Shoup
Central Library, 6:00 PM
As part of the Library’s Adult Summer Reading Program whose theme celebrates Indiana’s bicentennial, adults are invited as local author Barbara Shoup leads a book discussion of An American Tune.
8/22 – From Match to Flame: The Evolution of Fahrenheit 451
Central Library, 6:00 PM
This 3rd Annual Ray Bradbury Memorial Lecture will be presented by Dr. Jonathan R. Eller, Chancellor’s Professor of English and Director for the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies. The unlikely evolution of Fahrenheit 451, and its even more remarkable transformation into an international literary classic and a major 1966 motion picture, forms the core of this lecture. Ray Bradbury drafted the final version during a nine-day blaze of creativity in the summer of 1953, but his nightmare world of book burning originated in a seven-year arc of drafts that spilled over into some of his most famous early stories.
8/22 – Author talk with Indiana’s Poet Laureate Shari Wagner
Pike Library, 6:00 PM
As part of the Library’s Adult Summer Reading Program whose theme celebrates Indiana’s bicentennial, adults are invited as Indiana’s Poet Laureate Shari Wagner conducts a poetry reading and discusses nature and history’s connections to poetry.
Katie O’Neill accepted an offer from the University of Louisiana PhD program. She has been awarded a full-time Graduate Teaching Assistantship. Congratulations and best wishes to Katie.
Ty Sassaman recently received publication acceptance of two nonfiction essays. “Swimming” will appear in The Sun “Readers Write”. The second piece, an essay about Coleman Barks, will be printed in a special issue of The Georgia Review.
Kaveh Akbar continues to see his poems in print across a variety of publications. Most recently, “Some Boys Aren’t Born They Bubble” appeared in Puerto del Sol and “
