On October 29th, Helen Frost traveled to the Central Library in downtown Indianapolis to accept the The Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award in the Regional category. This award seeks to recognize the contributions of Indiana authors to the literary landscape in Indiana and across the nation.
In recognition of her entire body of work, Helen received $7,500, and in addition, the Glick Foundation made a $2,500 donation to a library of her choice. Helen named the Children's and Young Adult departments of the Allen County Public Library to be so honored. Helen is the author of Diamond Willow, Crossing Stones, The Braid, Spinning Through the Universe, and Keesha’s House, a 2004 Printz Honor Book. Her most recent title, Hidden, was released this past May.
Here is Helen's response to the award ceremony:
At my table at the awards banquet, I’m surrounded by friends and family, and we relax in the light of the white floating candle on our table. The conversation is gentle, easy, quietly cel
ebratory.
When my name is called, I step up onto the stage to receive the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award, one of three that will be given on this elegant evening. I look out at the banquet hall, holding in my hand a small paper with my notes of people to thank, a few remarks on what this means to me, maybe a small joke.
But the podium is dark. I can’t read my notes, and I am dazzled, as the lights of all the candles shine up at me from the round white tables in this room which is not usually a banquet hall, it is a library--the old, beautifully modernized, Central Indianapolis Library. The moment has such deep presence: the presence of these three hundred people who have come together out of a shared love of books, who write books and read them and care deeply about them. And there’s the surrounding presence of the books on the library shelves, and all the people who have written and read them, all the librarians who have helped make connections between writers and readers.
I am surprised to discover that I am completely at ease among all these friends, known and unknown. I have no anxiety about saying the wrong thing, or forgetting to say the right thing. I find word
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