IHS Press Releases Indiana Out Loud: Dan Carpenter on the Heartland Beat
Indianapolis? The Indiana Historical Society Press is pleased to announce the release of Indiana Out Loud: Dan Carpenter on the Heartland Beat. This collection of the best of this renowned op-ed columnist’s work since 1993 includes engaging perceptions of some of the state’s most intriguing characters.
Since 1976, Carpenter’s writing has appeared in the pages of The Indianapolis Star as a police reporter, book critic and columnist. In writing for the state’s largest newspaper, Carpenter has covered the life and times of some notable Hoosiers, as well as serving as a voice for the disadvantaged, sometimes exasperating the Star’s readership in central Indiana as the newspaper’s “house liberal.”
Indiana Out Loud includes timely and engaging examinations of the lives of such intriguing people as wrestling announcer Sam Menacker, survivor of the James Jones People’s Temple massacre Catherine Hyacinth Thrash, Indianapolis African American leader Charles “Snookie” Hendricks, Atlas Grocery impresario Sid Maurer, and coaches James “Doc” Counsilman and Ray Crowe. The book also includes a healthy dose of literary figures, politicians, historians, knaves, crooks, and fools.
As Carpenter notes, the book “presumes to make itself heard as a distinct voice of this place in this time of economic struggle, political divisiveness, creative persistence, flammable faith, terror brought home and war, seemingly, without end or limit.
“The cumulative sound comprises the sweet and strident, the measured and manic, the deafening and the barely detectable. It is as sharp as the orchestrations of a legendary neighborhood grocer and as seductive as the baritone riffs of a celebrated junkie poet. It shrieks against arbitrary war and enforced poverty. It sings the pain of inevitable loss and the praises of improbable gift bearers.”
About the Author
Dan Carpenter is an Indianapolis native and a graduate of Cathedral High School and Marquette University. In addition to his work for The Indianapolis Star, he has published poetry in Illuminations, Pearl, Poetry East, Flying Island, Tipton Poetry Journal, and Southern Indiana Review. Carpenter’s book Hard Pieces: Dan Carpenter’s Indiana, was published by Indiana University Press in 1993. He lives in Indianapolis’ Butler-Tarkington neighborhood with his wife, Mary, and children, Patrick and Erin.
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Title: Indiana Out Loud: Dan Carpenter on the Heartland Beat
Price: $16.95
Pages: 134
Size: 6 x 9
Cover: Hardcover
Publication Date: August 2013
ISBN: 978-087195-308-7