Micah Ling '03 Wins 2011 Indiana Authors Award
November 16, 2011
November 16, 2011, Greencastle, Ind. — Micah E. Ling, a 2003 graduate of DePauw University, is the winner of the 2011 Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award for "Emerging Author." The award and its $5,000 prize goes to a writer who has published no more than two books during his or her lifetime.
"As a poet, we aren't as often recognized with this award, and fiction writers tend to be more popular," Ling tells the Daily Journal of Johnson County, Indiana. "So this is a huge honor, to be chosen by my peers like this."
Ryan Trares writes, "Micah Ling uses the lives of others to examine her own emotions through poetry. She explored isolation in an island paradise through Amelia Earhart. She compared a burning barn and the wild spread of flame to feelings of sadness. For her work, she's been recognized as one of Indiana's brightest new writers."
The newspaper adds, "Her poetry collections -- which center on feelings of seclusion, personal reflection and devastating imagery -- set her apart from others in the Indiana, according to the award's judges ... This was the second straight year that Ling was nominated for the Emerging Author prize."
She has published two poetry collections, Three Islands and Sweetgrass, and hastaught at DePauw, Indiana University, Butler University and Franklin College. An English (writing) major at DePauw, Ling earned an M.A. in 20th Century American Literature and the M.F.A. in poetry, both at Indiana University.
The Eugene and 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.
"Micah was a finalist in 2010, and our panel all felt that her work had improved over the past year," says library foundation spokeswoman Emily Berger. "Her contributions as an educator to burgeoning writers all over the state was also a big factor in her being chosen as well."
Visit the Daily Journal online.
Greg Schwipps, Richard W. Peck Professor of Creative Writing and associate professor of English at DePauw and 1995 graduate of the University, was the 2010 recipient of the Indiana Authors' Emerging Author Award.
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