Writers from Indianapolis

James L. White (March 26, 1936 – July 13, 1981) was an American poet, editor and teacher.

Dan Wakefield (born May 21, 1932) is an American novelist, journalist and screenwriter.His best-selling novels, Going All the Way (1970) and Starting Over (1973), were made into feature films.
He wrote the screenplay for Going All the Way, which starred Ben Affleck, Rachel Weisz and Rose McGowan.He created the NBC prime time television series James at 15 (1977–78) and was story editor of the series (1977).
His other notable works include Island in the City: The World of Spanish Harlem (1959), a pioneering journalistic account of a Puerto Rican neighborhood in New York, and the memoir New York in the Fifties (2001), produced as a documentary film by Betsy Blankenbaker. His memoir, Returning: A Spiritual Journey (1988), was called by Bill Moyers "one of the most important memoirs of the spirit I have ever read". He edited and wrote the Introduction to Kurt Vonnegut Letters (2012). Wakefield received The Bernard DeVoto Fellowship at The Bread Loaf Writer Conference in 1958, a Nieman Fellowship in Journalism (1963–64) and a Rockefeller Grant in Writing, 1968.
Wakefield retired as writer in residence at Florida International University (1995–2009), where he received The Faculty Award for Mentorship. He moved back to his home town of Indianapolis in 2011.

Gerald "Jerry" Neal Williamson (April 17, 1932 – December 8, 2005) was an American horror writer and editor known under the name J. N. Williamson. Born in Indianapolis, Indiana he graduated from Shortridge High School. He studied journalism at Butler University. He published his first novel in 1979 and went on to publish more than 40 novels and 150 short stories. In 2003 he received a lifetime achievement award from the Horror Writers of America. He edited the critically acclaimed How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction (1987) which covered the themes of such writing and cited the works of such writers as Robert Bloch, Lee Prosser, Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury, H. P. Lovecraft, August Derleth, William F. Nolan, and Stephen King. Many important writers in the genre contributed to the book. Williamson edited the popular anthology series, Masques. Some of his novels include The Ritual (1979), Playmates (1982), Noonspell (1991), The Haunt (1999), among others.
In 1946, Williamson founded The Illustrious Clients of Indianapolis, a Sherlock Holmes scion society of the Baker Street Irregulars.
Williamson recalled in a 2003 interview that his first work of fiction was a Sherlock Holmes pastiche called "The Terrible Death of Crosby, The Banker".

Emma Lou Thornbrough (January 24, 1913 – December 19, 1994) was a pioneer among professional historians in African-American history, a lifelong civil-rights activist in Indiana, a professor of history at Butler University from 1946 until her retirement in 1983, and an Indiana historian and author. She was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. Thornbrough's major scholarly contributions include several publications devoted to black history, such as The Negro in Indiana before 1900; Booker T. Washington; T. Thomas Fortune, Militant Journalist; Since Emancipation: A Short History of Indiana Negroes, 1863–1963; and Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century (published posthumously in 2000). She also wrote Indiana in the Civil War Era, 1850–1880, among other scholarly publications. In addition to her writing and research, Thornbrough was well known as a social activist and was especially active in Indianapolis civil rights groups, including the Indianapolis Human Relations Council, which she helped organize; the Indiana Civil Liberties Union; and the Indianapolis National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Joseph Hayes (August 2, 1918 – September 11, 2006) was an American playwright, novelist and screenwriter born in Indianapolis, Indiana, the son of Harold Joseph, a furniture dealer, and Pearl M. Arnold Hayes. Hayes entered a Benedictine monastery at the age of thirteen, attending St. Meinrad Seminary High School in southern Indiana for two years, though graduated from Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis in 1936. He married Marrijane Johnston in 1938 and they had three children: Daniel, Gregory, Jason. Hayes studied at Indiana University, along with his wife, from 1938 to 1941.In 1949, his play, "Leaf and Bough", was performed on Broadway. In 1954, he wrote the novel The Desperate Hours, his most successful work. In an interview in 1987, Hayes said of the novel that his main influence was "desperation": "I wrote it in six weeks, working 16 to 17 hours a day." Regarding the home invasion that occurred in the novel, he said it "was the most dramatic thing I could think of that would relate to the most people."Hayes wrote the Broadway play The Desperate Hours, which won the 1955 Tony Award for Best Play, was awarded an Edgar for Best Screenplay by the Mystery Writers of America for the 1955 film version, and received the Indiana Authors Day Award for the novel version. He was the first individual to write a novel, play, and screenplay of the same story. Hayes later wrote the screenplay for a 1990 re-make, about which he said "Since I'm the only writer who has ever done novel, play and screenplay solo from a single work of his own I can't let anyone else at it."Hayes co-wrote with his wife both the original novel (1956) and screenplay for the Walt Disney movie Bon Voyage! in 1962. Hayes also wrote his final Broadway play, Calculated Risk in 1962.
Among his other novels are The Hours After Midnight, Don't Go Away Mad, The Third Day, The Deep End, Like Any Other Fugitive, The Long Dark Night, Missing and Presumed Dead, Island on Fire, Winner's Circle, No Escape, and The Ways of Darkness.Among his other plays are The Happiest Millionaire, The Midnight Sun, The Deep End, Is Anyone Listening?, Summer in Copenhagen, Impolite Comedy, and Come into my Parlor.Hayes was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Service Award from Indiana University in 1970, and received the Honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Indiana University in 1972. Hayes died of Alzheimer's disease in 2006. Survivors included three sons, ten grandchildren, and eleven great-grandchildren.

Edward Clinton Ezell (7 Nov 1939, Indianapolis, Indiana – 23 Dec 1993, Northern Virginia) was an American author and professor who served as National Firearms Collection curator at the National Museum of American History, administered by the Smithsonian Institution. He was also founding Director of the Institute for Research on Small Arms in International Security.

Albert B. Cleage Jr. (June 1911 – February 20, 2000) was a Black nationalist Christian minister, political candidate, newspaper publisher, political organizer, and author. He founded the prominent Shrine of the Black Madonna Church, as well as the Shrine Cultural Centers and Bookstores in Detroit, Michigan, and Atlanta, Georgia, and Houston, Texas. All locations are still open and functioning under the BCN mission. Cleage, who changed his name to Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman in the early 1970s, played an important role in the Civil Rights Movement in Detroit during the 1960s and 1970s. He became increasingly involved with Black nationalism and Black separatism during the 1970s, rejecting many of the core principles of racial integration. He founded a church-owned farm, Beulah Land, in Calhoun Falls, South Carolina, and spent most of his last years there. He was the father of daughters Kristin Cleage and writer Pearl Cleage.
He died on February 20, 2000, at 88 while visiting Beulah Land, his church's new farm.

Thomas Michael "Tim" Scanlon (; born 1940), usually cited as T. M. Scanlon, is an American philosopher. At the time of his retirement in 2016, he was the Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity in Harvard University's Department of Philosophy, where he had taught since 1984. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2018.

Theodore William Allen (August 23, 1919 – January 19, 2005) was an American independent scholar, writer, and activist, best known for his pioneering writings since the 1960s on white skin privilege and the origin of white identity. His major theoretical work The Invention of the White Race was published in two volumes: Racial Oppression and Social Control (1994) and The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America (1997). The central ideas of this opus however, appeared in much earlier works such as his seminal Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race, published as a pamphlet in 1975, and in expanded form the following year. He claimed that the notion of white race was invented as "a ruling class social control formation."Allen did research for the next quarter century to expand and document his ideas, particularly on the alleged relation of white supremacy to the working class.