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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA book penned by an Indianapolis-area lawyer has been selected for the shortlist of honorees for the 2022 Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Awards.
Ruth Reichard’s work, “Blood and Steel: Ryan White, the AIDS Crisis and the Deindustrialization of Kokomo, Indiana,” published in 2021, was named this month among the top recent nonfiction works in the state.
Reichard, a graduate of Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, is currently an assistant teaching professor and director of the legal studies program in Ball State University’s department of political science.
Before working at Ball State, she was an education attorney with the Indiana Office of Court Services. She has nearly 30 years of combined litigation, judicial and teaching experience.
Reichard’s book focuses on the relationships between three major events: one of Kokomo’s largest employers, Continental Steel, filing for bankruptcy, the spread of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, and Ryan White’s fight to attend public school after being diagnosed with HIV/AIDS.
The 40 shortlisted books across eight categories were “written by lifelong Hoosiers, professors at Indiana colleges and universities and former residents with a deep connection to Indiana.”
According to the program’s website, “The awards were established in 2009 as a vision of Eugene and Marilyn Glick and are a component of Indiana Humanities’ rich and diverse literary programming. Indiana Humanities with support from Glick Philanthropies confer awards every other year. Honorees have the opportunity to participate in an annual statewide speaker program and connect with readers, teachers and students.”
Reichard’s book is going up against five others in the nonfiction category, including books focusing on the 1977 University of Evansville basketball team that died in a tragic plane accident, the operations of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana and a story about an award-winning war correspondent who acknowledged the effects of war on the men who fought in it.
Honorees for the awards will be announced Aug. 24.
In addition to publishing her book in 2021, Reichard last year was also a contestant on the TV game show Jeopardy!.
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