Some of the stories are set in Indiana and some are not, but all of these authors were born in or live(d) in Indiana!
Before Hoosier-born Ernie Pyle was a Pulitzer Prize winning war correspondent, whose syndicated column was published in 400 daily and 300 weekly newspapers nationwide, he was the editor-in-chief of IU's Indiana Daily Student. Before that overseas correspondence, where he was killed by enemy fire during the Battle of Okinawa, he was a roving reporter for the Scripps-Howard newspaper syndicate. Much of his writing about Indiana is included in this collection specifically.
Born in Greenfield, Riley was known as the "Hoosier Poet", especially for his work with regional dialects and nostalgic, sentimental children's rhymes. He was among the most popular writers of the late 19th and early 20th century. His home in Indianapolis is now a Museum.
Born in Gosport and currently a resident of Bloomington, Thom was a magazine and newspaper journalist, as well as a lecturer at IU School of Journalism, before becoming a full-time author. He is known for his intricately detailed American historical fiction. Thom comments on the irony of his work being made into e-books: "I use every bit of my skill and imagination to take my readers hundreds of years into the past -- and now they'll visit those old days through the screen of an electronic gizmo."
As the subtitle indicates, Kimmel grew up in Mooreland (population 300ish). She also studied creative writing at Ball State and attended seminary at Earlham College. This bestselling memoir, from her perspective as a child, humorously describes her family while growing up in the mid 1960s and 1970s.
Born in Indianapolis, Wakefield worked for the Indianapolis Star as a sports correspondent during school, but then moved away. This semi-autobiographical novel is about two men who return to Indianapolis after the Korean War. Wakefield himself would not move back to Indianapolis until 2011, contradicting his friend Kurt Vonnegut's prediction of him in a review of this title in Life magazine: “Having written this book, Dan Wakefield will never be able to go back to Indianapolis. He will have to watch the 500 mile race on television.”
Philip Gulley is a Quaker pastor, writer, and speaker from Danville, Indiana. His Harmony series focuses on life in an eccentric Quaker community in Harmony, Indiana. His memoir was a semi-finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor in 2010.
Shepherd, who was raised in Hammond and attended Indiana University on-and-off, is perhaps now best known for providing his own adaptation of these stories and narration for the film A Christmas Story. The stories about growing up in Northwest Indiana were originally told over the radio. Shepherd was surely an influence on monologuists like Garrison Keillor and Spalding Gray. Jerry Seinfeld has even said "I learned how to do comedy from Jean Shepherd".
Booth Tarkington was born and raised in Indianapolis and attended Purdue University (for two years before transferring to Princeton). He won the Pulitizer Prize twice, for this book in 1919 and for Alice Adams in 1922. Many of his novels are set in the Midwest, if not Indiana specifically; as this one is set among the titular family, in a fictionalized version of Indianapolis, during the rapid industrialization after the Civil War to the early 20th century.
Born in Bloomington, and a graduate of Indiana University, Cabot is best known for the Princess Diaries books (two of which were adapted into Disney movies). She has several book series, some written under pseudonyms, for a variety of ages and audiences.
Ross Lockridge, Jr. was born and raised in Bloomington, graduating from IU in 1935 with the nickname 'A plus Lockridge'. His initial 600,000 word typed manuscript was repeatedly required to be paired down. A few months after finally publishing his Great American Novel, Lockridge committed suicide (he is buried in Rose Hill Cemetery in Bloomington).
Dreiser was born in Terre Haute and dropped out of Indiana University without a degree. While in Ohio, Dreiser published this first novel that is retrospectively seen as a turn away from the moralist Victorian ideals to a more realistic naturalism (at the time of publication its going against social morals and norms of the time was criticized by many for being 'too realistic'). Before even beginning An American Tragedy, Dreiser famously almost bought a ticket for the Titanic, but his publisher deemed it too expensive.
Born and raised in Indianapolis, Vonnegut was captured during the Battle of the Bulge in WWII, interned in Dresden, and survived the Allied bombings by hiding in a meat-locker in the slaughterhouse he was imprisoned. This experience is obvious inspiration for parts of this sixth and perhaps most well-known of his novels.
Michael Koryta was born and raised in Bloomington (attending Bloomington North High School and Indiana University). Before writing full-time, he worked as a private investigator, a newspaper reporter, and taught at the IU School of Journalism. He has won and been nominated for numerous writing awards, as well as having several of his novels optioned for the movies (the adaptation of this book will be the first released). He has also recently invented the pseudonym Scott Carson to separate his occasional penchant for supernatural stories from the crime-based thrillers he is more well known for.