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| From left: emcee Isaac Fitzgerald; GLIBA executive director Larry Law; authors Anton Treuer, Travis Zimmerman, Marcie Rendon, and Ross Gay; MIBA executive director Grace Hagen. | |
The "fly-over" states, declared Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association executive director Larry Law, are a "living, breathing, literary force" as he welcomed booksellers to the Heartland Booksellers Awards, kicking off the 2025 Heartland Fall Forum in Indianapolis, Ind.
More than 200 of the 300 registered bookseller attendees gathered for the Heartland Booksellers Awards ceremony, hosted by Dirtbag, Massachusetts author Isaac Fitzgerald. Award winners in attendance included picture book winner Travis Zimmerman (How the Birds Got Their Songs, Minnesota Historical Society Press), YA/middle grade winner Anton Treuer (Where Wolves Don't Die, Levine Querido), and poet Marcie Rendon (Anishinaabe Songs for a New Millennium, University of Minnesota Press).
Ross Gay, winner of the 2025 Voice of the Heartland Award, was introduced to cheers from the crowd, and received a standing ovation following his celebration of indie booksellers, during which he praised independent booksellers' acumen and understanding of "scalability," which Gay identified as "the scale of a person, a neighbor." He closing with a tribute to "scribbled" shelftalkers, mismatched chairs that honor "different bodies, different shapes," and booksellers' resilience in the face of present-day "incursions on information," to which booksellers respond, said Gay, with "the best light... the windows books themselves exude." --Neil Strandberg