The 40th season of Writing Out Loud, our annual author series, begins in September 2024. The Friends of the Michigan City Public Library will host a reception following each program.
Writing Out Loud was created in 1984 with a grant from Indiana Humanities. Since then, more than 140 authors have appeared at the library. Programs are supported with funds by the Patrons of Writing Out Loud, Michigan City Public Library Endowment Fund, and The Friends of the Library.
David Hoppe and Martin Buechley
Saturday, September 7
7:30pm
David Hoppe and Martin Buechley will offer an evening of jazz and prose. Martin’s jazz performance will open the program, followed by David’s reading from his satirical novel, Mondo POTUS: An American Love Story. David was the founder of Writing Out Loud in 1984.
David Hoppe’s writing explores the intersections of politics and culture. He has been a writer, editor and columnist for NUVO since 1998, serving, at different times, as Associate Editor and Arts Editor. He has received nine First Place awards from the Indiana Society of Professional Journalists in a variety of categories. His book, Personal Indianapolis (Hawthorne Publishing), is a collection of NUVO columns written since 2001.
Hoppe is also author of the book, Food For Thought: An Indiana Harvest (Indiana Humanities) on the burgeoning food scene in the Hoosier state, and is co-author, with Van Kirby, of On the Table By the Window (Dog Ear Publishing), Kirby’s memoir about his struggle to be the first gay man in Indiana to win custody of his children. He has edited two collections of essays, Where We Live: Essays About Indiana (Indiana University Press) and Hard Pieces: Dan Carpenter’s Indiana (Indiana University Press).
Jonita Davis
Saturday, September 28
7:30pm
Jonita Davis is a local news reporter for Colorado Community Media, film and culture critic, author, and freelance writer. She has been writing for 16 years on topics exploring the intersection of pop culture, identity, education, parenting, and how those relationships affect our lives as parents, women, black women, nerds, and people of this planet. Davis holds a both a Bachelor’s and Master’s in English from Purdue Northwest.
Poet Valerie Wallace
Saturday, October 12
7:30pm
Valerie Wallace is the author of House of McQueen, selected by Vievee Francis for the Four Way Books Intro Prize (Spring 2018), and the chapbook The Dictators’ Guide to Good Housekeeping. Margaret Atwood chose 10 of her poems for the Atty Award and she has received an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award and the San Miguel Writers’ Conference Poetry Award. She is the recipient of grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, the Barbara Deming Fund for Women, and fellowships from Midwest Writers, Ragdale Foundation, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Vermont Studio Center, Writers in the Heartland, and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts.
Valerie lives in Chicago, where she teaches with the City Colleges of Chicago, gives private workshops, and works in communications, most recently as Assistant Director, Communications, for the project Virtue, Happiness, & the Meaning of Life at the University of Chicago and with Resilience. She was an associate editor and the webmaster with RHINO from 2010-2016 and a mentor with the Afghan Women’s Writing Project for 5 years.
Melanie Benjamin
Saturday, October 19
7:30pm
Melanie Benjamin is a prize-winning novelist and the New York Times bestselling author of California Golden, The Children’s Blizzard, Mistress of the Ritz, The Girls in the Picture, The Swans of Fifth Avenue, The Aviator’s Wife, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb, and Alice I Have Been.
Her novels have been translated in over fifteen languages, featured in national magazines such as Good Housekeeping, People, and Entertainment Weekly, and optioned for film.
Melanie is a native of the Midwest, having grown up in Indianapolis, Indiana, where she pursued her first love, theater. After raising her two sons, Melanie, a life-long reader (including being the proud winner, two years in a row, of her hometown library’s summer reading program!), decided to pursue a writing career. After writing her own parenting column for a local magazine, and winning a short story contest, Melanie published two contemporary novels under her real name, Melanie Hauser, before turning to historical fiction. Melanie lives in Chicago with her husband.
