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In brief
The record: Fort Wayne's literary institutions are thin beside its stages — no durable local poetry society or literary organization surfaced in the record reached — and the city's written life is carried mostly as biography, in the People and Artists sections: Patricia Lockwood, Michael Martone and Edith Hamilton among them. The exception that anchors an entry is institutional by office: George Kalamaras, professor of English at Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne (now Purdue Fort Wayne) from 1990, was named Indiana Poet Laureate by the Indiana Arts Commission and served 2014–2016 — his university's release dates the term January 1, 2014 through December 31, 2015 — running a laureate's program of video readings of other poets. He had held a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1993, and his To Sleep in the Horse's Belly won the 2024 Indiana Book Award in Poetry. The Northeast Indiana Playwright Festival, under Civic Theatre above, is the city's one standing institution for new writing for the stage.
Sources:
- Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne, Fall Convocation address (2014) and university release (March 2016) — Kalamaras's appointment as Indiana Poet Laureate and the term's dates; George Kalamaras biography (Wabash Watershed) — the 1990 appointment, the NEA fellowship, the laureate video project.